The worldwide business analytics software market is expected to grow at a 9.7 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2017, according to research firm IDC.
Demand for business analytics solutions will continue to be driven by the promise of better and faster decision-making and competitive advantage that results from the ability to analyze and act upon information in a timely manner.
“There is growing quantifiable evidence that data-driven decision making enabled by business analytics solutions provides a competitive difference,” said Dan Vesset, program vice president, business analytics at IDC.
“This, along with broad interest in big data, has pushed the technology to the top of many executive agendas and ushered it into the mainstream market.”
In 2012, the worldwide business analytics software market grew 8.7 percent year over year with revenues reaching $34.9 billion. This was significantly lower than the 15 percent year-over-year growth experienced in 2011, and is attributable to the macroeconomic issues plaguing the global economy and the weak performance of European markets.
Despite the slower growth, the business analytics software market outperformed the overall software market, which grew 3.6 percent year over year in 2012.
On a regional basis, the emerging regions of Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) and Latin America that showed the best performance in 2012, with 13.4 percent year-over-year growth each.
The recovering US economy helped North America to keep pace with the emerging regions in 2012 with a 12.1 percent growth rate.
Latin America is forecast to have the highest growth rate through 2017 ? a 12.4 percent CAGR ? followed by North America with 10.9 percent and Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) with 10.5 percent.
Of the three primary segments of the business analytics software market, the data warehousing platform software segment experienced the fastest growth in 2012, growing 10.8 percent over the previous year.
The business intelligence and analytic tools segment and the performance management and analytic applications segment each grew 7.7 percent year over year in 2012.
In this diverse and highly competitive market, the six largest vendors ? Oracle, SAP, IBM, Microsoft, SAS, and Teradata ? accounted for 64 percent of worldwide revenues in 2012.
