SA`s business intelligence (BI) tools market will continue to experience double-digit growth over the next five years, reaching a value of R892.9 million by 2009, says research firm BMI-TechKnowledge.
This is a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.8% from last year, when the market size was R448.3 million.
Analyst Iain Machanik says the query reporting and analysis segment will show the greatest growth, at a 16.6% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), which he adds is a conservative forecast.
Demand for data mining will slow, with an 8.6% CAGR forecast. Packaged data marts (all-in-one, off-the-shelf functionality) will see a 10.9% CAGR.
Last year query reporting and analysis (QRA) accounted for 62% of the market, packaged data mart 29% and data mining 9%.
"QRA is 62%. Internationally it`s 80%, so we are still behind but catching up," Machanik comments.
The International Data Corporation views BI tools as a maturing software market.
Machanik says a speculative assumption is that at least one of the top independent BI vendors will be acquired. The next two years will likely see more merger and acquisition activity between BI and other enterprise software or other IT vendors.
Other trends in the sector likely to continue include incremental implementations of BI tools as organisations become more mature and as needs become more sophisticated. There will also be increased need for full-featured, cross-platform BI software.
Among other trends, more repeatable decision-making processes are likely to be automated.
However, there are several inhibitors which need to be considered. These include the difficulty in proving return on investment and the memory of past hype.
The existence of "data priests" and job guarding is also among the inhibitors to growth, with people reluctant to let go of data for fear that their jobs could be endangered if other people are empowered.
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