Gartner forecasts Australian market growth in business intelligence software

Staff Writers
Thursday, 19 February 2009 16:47

The market for business intelligence (BI) platform software in Australia is forecast to reach A$174.8 million (US$152 million) in 2009, up 16.8 percent from A$149.6 million (US$130.1 million) in 2008, according to technology research and advisory firm Gartner.

Speaking ahead of the Gartner Business Intelligence and Information Management Summit in Sydney this month, Gartner analysts said BI platform purchases should be more resilient to a recession compared with some other software areas, “but a tougher economic environment, together with stronger pricing pressures, will still hamper growth during the next five years.”

According to Gartner, many organisations were still trying to get value from their BI investments, and further investments by these organisations would be constrained until they determined how to get value from the investments already made.

Gartner says that for the fourth year in a row, business intelligence (BI) applications have been ranked the top technology priority in its 2009 Executive Programs survey of more than 1,500 chief information officers (CIOs) around the world.

Ian Bertram, Gartner managing vice president and chair of the 2009 Gartner BI Summit, said that because BI had the highest priority for CIOs, it would fare better than many other technologies and management practices in the economic downturn.

"Businesses in this region will continue to prioritise BI because it's transformational," said Bertram.  "BI is even more important when times are tough.  It can help find bottlenecks and inefficiencies or to expose areas that are profitable. We continue to see traction for solutions such as spend analytics, risk and fraud.

"The rapid growth in information generated from enterprise applications, the popularity of metrics-driven business initiatives and the growing need for regulatory compliance will also continue to drive growth in BI," he said.

While market demand for BI platforms would be favourable, heavy discounting could be expected, according to Gartner, and the effect of the market consolidation by SAP, Oracle and IBM was to reduce overall revenue because BI was often sold as an add-on or part of a larger solution bundle.

Bertram said skills shortages continued to hamper BI projects in Australia.

"Mature markets such as Australia and Singapore continue to make investments but struggle with a gap in implementation skills. Limited BI skills in Asia Pacific will inhibit growth in license revenue, but it also represents an opportunity for service providers.”

Gartner forecast that the overall Asia Pacific BI platform software market would continue to grow at a respectable compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.3% through 2012, reaching more than US$510 million by 2012.

The firm said that Australia would remain the biggest BI platforms software market in Asia Pacific through 2012, reaching A$243.8 (US$212 million) in revenue, followed by China, and the local BI market would be sustained through maintenance revenue, which would become more pronounced in the slowing economic environment.