The market for business intelligence software will grow
consistently over the next three years to reach £3bn in 2009,
rising from £2.35bn last year, according to Gartner.
This year, the analyst group is forecasting growth of 6% in
business intelligence – lifting sales to £2.5bn.
Colleen Graham, principal research analyst at Gartner, told
delegates at Gartner’s annual Business Intelligence summit in
London that the widespread use of enterprise applications like ERP,
CRM and HR packages was generating significant volumes of data that
firms were starting to put to better use.
“By investing in business intelligence, companies can further
leverage their enterprise application investments and turn the
torrent of data into meaningful insight, to better measure
performance, respond more quickly to market changes and
opportunities, and comply with an increasingly complex regulatory
environment,” said Graham.
Evidence that business intelligence is high on the CIO’s agenda
was also supported by Gartner’s recently published survey of 1,400
CIOs from around the world, which revealed that better use of
business intelligence is at the top of their technology priorities
this year.
“Business intelligence is now part of an organsiation’s licence
to operate, as every enterprise needs to manage information,” said
Frank Buytendijk, research vice-president and conference chair at
Gartner.
“However, business intelligence has not yet achieved the
necessary level of strategic importance and is not included as an
essential part of corporate planning activities.”