Gartner predicts BI market will jump 7.3% to $18.3bn in 2017

Gartner is forecasting a 7.3% increase in the business intelligence (BI) and analytics software market this year to $18.3bn, with what it calls “modern BI and analytics” expanding more rapidly than the overall market.

The research and advisory system last year refocused its Magic Quadrant from “IT-led reporting to modern business-led analytics”. This had the effect of putting Tableau, Qlik and Microsoft in the leaders part of the quadrant, while Microstrategy, SAP, IBM and SAS were all downgraded, and Oracle dropped out completely.

However, Gartner is now saying that the “modern BI and analytics market is expected to decelerate” from 63.6% growth in 2015 to a projected 19% by 2020. It stated its belief that this reflects data and analytics becoming mainstream in a press statement ahead of its forthcoming slew of data and analytics summit, which takes place in Sydney, Texas, London, Tokyo, Mumbai and Sao Paulo.

Its most recent Magic Quadrant, published on 16 February 2017, Microsoft, Tableau and Qlik are again in the top leaders quadrant, while Oracle is back as a “niche player”.

Rita Sallam, research vice-president at Gartner, said: “Purchasing decisions continue to be influenced heavily by business executives and users who want more agility and the option for small personal and departmental deployments to prove success. Enterprise-friendly buying models have become more critical to successful deployments.”

Gartner said an increased need for governance will serve as a catalyst for renewed IT engagement, in an arena where business users have sought to avoid that.

It also said the emergence of smart data discovery capabilities, machine learning and “automation of the entire analytics workflow” has created opportunities for both start-ups and traditional BI suppliers who were caught on the hop by the rise of the purveyors of modern BI.

Data preparation is an area attracting more business investment, said Gartner. “The ability to rapidly prepare, clean, enrich and find trusted datasets in a more automated way becomes an important enabler,” it said.

The firm also predicted a rosy future for cloud BI and analytics “Gartner expects the majority of new licensing buying to be for cloud deployments by 2020, although, at present, on-premise is the dominant mode,” it said.