Demand for BI software growing

Businesses around the world are tipped to up their spending on business intelligence staff and related software over the next three years, analysts at Gartner Group have said.

The market research company surveyed 917 businesses in the US, Canada, Germany, France, UK, China, Japan and Australia of various industries and sizes on their expectations for the next three years.

Some 39 percent of survey respondents said they would need to increase their spend on business intelligence this year. Another 34 percent said they planned to spend the same amount this year as in 2004, Gartner said.

Also, big businesses were expected to need three times as many staff with business intelligence expertise by 2008 as they did in 2004, analysts said.

Howard Dresner, vice-president at Gartner in the US, said “lack of skills” and high Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) were holding back business intelligence.

“High TCO is particularly a barrier in Asia, and for those who deploy business intelligence for the first time. In Japan, nearly half the respondents said that difficulty in learning to use business intelligence hampers its adoption,” Dresner said.

Established markets for high-tech, healthcare, telecommunications companies and mid-size educational institutions were likely to experience an increased business intelligence spend, Dresner said.
 
Bill Hostmann, a research director at Gartner, said most respondents were keen on adopting Corporate Performance Management (CPM) applications in particular.

“Demand for this type of application appears to be benefiting from growing government regulation,” Hostmann said. “Front-office applications such as sales analytics is the next application, perhaps reflecting an improved and improving economy.”

Gartner presented its findings in the US at a Gartner Business Intelligence summit last week.