The market for business intelligence software will double in total revenue to reach $8 billion by 2012, according to new research from market watcher Datamonitor. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 12.5%.

That growth will be driven by the ever-growing amount of data that companies must store and, if they are to benefit from the burden, analyse.

“The volume of data enterprises need to store, examine and analyse is greater than ever before,” said Datamonitor analyst Vuk Trifkovic.

BI tools, which apply statistical analysis to large data sets to help businesses take decisions, have in recent time become commoditised - little now differentiates the main players in terms of technology.

That has lead to consolidation in the market place, with two of the biggest names in BI, Hyperion and Business Objects being acquired by applications giants Oracle and SAP respectively.

But as this research reveals, that does not mean busineses’ appetites for buying BI is letting up. Indeed, while the enterprise market may be saturated, most players have their eyes on the medium-sized business market, where BI is under-utilised.

In this BI boom, though, the beneficiaries will be the applications providers that have all but assimilated the ‘best-of-breed’ BI industry.

Further reading

SAP acquires Business Objects

Oracle buys itself leadership in BI with Hyperion acquisition

The science of winning - How analytics is changing the odds for business success.

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