The worldwide business analytics software market is expected to grow at a 9.7% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2017, according to a new forecast from 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, claims the firm.
"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% year over year with revenues reaching $34.9 billion. This was significantly lower than the 15% 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% 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% year-over-year growth each. The recovering U.S. economy helped North America to keep pace with the emerging regions in 2012 with a 12.1% growth rate. Latin America is forecast to have the highest growth rate through 2017 - a 12.4% CAGR - followed by North America with 10.9% and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) with 10.5%.
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% over the previous year. The business intelligence and analytic tools segment and the performance management and analytic applications segment each grew 7.7% year over year in 2012. In this diverse and highly competitive market, the six largest vendors - Oracle, SAP, IBM, Microsoft, SAS, Teradata - accounted for 64% of worldwide revenues in 2012.