IDC market report reveals Business Objects as fastest growing of top five BI vendors

For the third year in a row, Business Objects is the number one end-user query and reporting vendor, according to the most recent market-share numbers from International Data Corporation (IDC).

In addition, Business Objects is the fastest growing vendor amongst the five largest companies in the overall business intelligence market, growing 10% and 17% faster than rivals Cognos and SAS Institute, respectively.

The largest segment within IDC`s Information Access Tools (IAT) market, end-user query and reporting accounts for 39% of the overall IAT market. Designed to provide end users with self-service access to data, the query and reporting segment is being driven by deployments with an increasing number of users both within and outside an organisation. Business Objects continues to take the number one spot in this segment, as the company is now the industry standard for extranets with over 750 extranet customers, and for enterprise deployments, with several customers who have rolled out Business Objects to 10 000 or more users.

"Bernard Liautaud, our chief executive, started the company based on one important vision - to empower individuals to access, analyse, and share information," said Gary Lawrence, country manager of Business Objects in SA. "Twelve years later this is still our singular focus, and the market has again rewarded our vision and quality products with the number one spot in the query and reporting segment. We have continued to innovate with new products for extranets, Web services, mobile BI, and analytic applications, and the market has responded in favour of Business Objects. This clearly explains why Business Objects enjoys the fastest growth amongst IDC`s five largest business intelligence vendors, and we will continue to set the pace with new innovations and breakthroughs for the business intelligence industry in the years to come."