BI, analytics market tops $12bn

business intelligence (BI), analytic applications and performance management (PM) software rose 16% to $12.2 billion in 2011 from $10.5 billion in 2010, according to a report from Gartner, eWeek writes.

The BI, analytics and PM software market was the second-fastest-growing sector in the overall worldwide enterprise software market in 2011, according to the report.

SAP remained the top vendor in combined worldwide BI, analytics and PM software revenue in 2011, accounting for 24% of the market, followed by Oracle, SAS Institute, IBM and Microsoft.

Oracle claimed 15.6% of the market, with SAS Institute claiming 12.6%, IBM taking 12.1% and Microsoft rounding out the top five with 8.7%, CIO Insight reveals.

Other vendors claimed more than a quarter (27.5%) of overall market share. IBM posted the largest year-over-year growth with 20.9%, followed by SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and SAS Institute.

The strong growth had been driven by two major forces, Dan Sommer, principal analyst at Gartner, observes in a statement, ZDNet reports.

Firstly, IT continues to spend and allocate money to BI, despite constrained budgets, he notes, pointing to Gartner's 2012 CIO survey, which showed that analytics and BI is still the top technology priority for CIOs in 2012.

“BI projects remain relatively shielded, while a healthy portion of any discretionary money will be available for upcoming analytic initiatives,” he says.