Advanced analytics growth surpasses expectation and set to rise, says IDC

In 2011, IT analysis firm IDC estimated the Australian Business Intelligence (BI) software market generated $324.12 million in software licensing and maintenance revenue. This has resulted in a revenue growth of 5.4% from 2010 to 2011 and is forecast to grow at 8.0% CAGR between 2011 to 2016.

“Growth for BI tools in 2011 has been primarily driven by the continuous efforts of Australian organisations to consolidate existing IT infrastructure,” said IDC Market Analyst Natalie Ng. “In addition, there have been more upgrades on existing BI tools seen, as opposed to purchasing newer solutions.

“An end-user survey, by IDC, has found, over the past years, adoption rates of BI tools has increased in importance. Businesses are recognising the benefits BI tools can deliver in an increasingly complex environment and is leveraging them to make intelligent, better-informed business decisions,” said Ng.

End-User Query and Analysis software is primarily used for its report building capabilities and has 82.8% share of the BI market. Advanced Analytics software is also a component of the BI market, but a growth inhibitor has been its perceived premium price tag and the insufficient supply of business users with appropriate analytical skills to use such tools. In spite of this, Advanced Analytics applications in Australia have 17.2% share of the overall market for BI.

“With the forthcoming carbon tax, Australian businesses will look to employ analytic tools in an effort to improve business efficiency to reduce carbon emissions,” said Ng.

In the near term, IDC expects prepackaged analytic applications and business analytics appliance offerings to be favoured by SMBs for their ease and low cost of deployment, and SaaS solutions for their low total cost of ownership (TCO).