Gartner Says Worldwide Business Intelligence Platform Market Grew 13 Percent in 2007; Industry Experienced Heavy Consolidation and Slowing Revenue Growth in North America

STAMFORD, Conn., June 19, 2008 — Worldwide business intelligence (BI) platform software revenue exceeded $5.1 billion in 2007, a 13 percent increase from 2006 revenue of $4.5 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. During the course of 2007, the three largest publicly traded BI companies (Business Objects, Cognos and Hyperion) were acquired.

“Taking all the consolidation into account, the large stack vendors Oracle, SAP, IBM and Microsoft have raised their market presence during the course of 2007 from just over one-fifth of the market to owning close to two-thirds by the end of the year,” said Dan Sommer, senior research analyst at Gartner. “That marks a pendulum shift from a market driven by best-of-breeds to one dominated by megavendors. However, many smaller independent BI vendors grew faster than the market, and we expect continued innovation and new vendors to enter the market.”

Business Objects was the No. 1 vendor in worldwide BI platform software revenue in 2007, accounting for 18.2 percent of the market (see Table 1). With SAP’s acquisition of Business Objects, the combined company would account for 26.3 percent of the global market. The merger of IBM and Cognos would make it in a virtual tie for the No. 2 position with 14.7 percent market share. Similarly, accounting for all Hyperion BI platform revenue under Oracle would increase its market share to 10.6 percent.

Table 1
Worldwide BI Platform Revenue Estimates for 2007 (Millions of U.S. Dollars)

Company	2007 Revenue	2007 Market Share (%)	2006 Revenue	2006 Market Share (%)	2006-2007 Growth (%)
Business Objects	939.6	18.2	870.6	19.0	7.9
SAS Institute	752.3	14.5	665.8	14.4	13.0
Cognos	710.0	13.7	621.5	13.6	14.2
Microsoft	547.0	10.6	455.2	9.9	20.2
Oracle	484.5	9.4	236.4	5.2	105.0
SAP	408.5	7.9	306.5	6.7	33.3
Others	1,332.6	25.8	1,420.4	31.0	-6.2
Total	5,141.7	100.0	4,576.3	100.0	13.1

Source: Gartner (June 2008)

Year-over-year growth in North America slowed drastically to 5 percent (down from 16 percent growth in 2006), but this was offset by buoyant spending in the rest of the world. “A weakening dollar and a slowing economy means vendors will have to get used to a much larger proportion of vendor revenue coming from outside of the United States,” Mr. Sommer said. “BI spending in the emerging regions of the world continued to grow aggressively, but also countries in Western Europe, especially Germany and France showed surprising growth when discounting currency fluctuations, after several years of morose spending.”

Additional information is available in the Gartner report “Market Share: Business Intelligence Platform Software, Worldwide, 2007." The report is available on Gartner’s Web site at http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=g_search&id=697207&subref=simplesearch.

 

Contact:


Christy Pettey
Gartner
+1 408 468 8312
christy.pettey@gartner.com


About Gartner:
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