Despite the recession, the worldwide market for business intelligence, performance management, and analytic software grew 4.2% last year to $9.3 billion, according to a recently released report by Gartner, Inc.
Although the rate of BI market expansion slowed in 2009, the fact that the market grew at the end of a deep recession demonstrated that BI “is not as cyclical as many other software areas,” said Dan Sommer, Gartner senior research analyst, in a prepared statement. “Organizations largely continued their BI projects, hoping that resulting transparency and insight would enable cost cuts and improved productivity and agility.”
SAP retained its top BI market share position, although its share dropped slightly. SAP had $2.08 billion in BI revenue, representing 22.4% of the market. In 2008, Gartner said, SAP captured 23.4% of BI software spending worldwide.
Oracle grew its BI revenue by 5.2%, narrowly surpassing SAS Institute for second place in market share with 14.5% of the market, Gartner said. SAS grew its BI revenue by 3% and claimed 14.2% of the worldwide market.