Today’s Smart Money is on SAP BI
By Sam Sliman, President, Optimal Solutions Integration

 

Having first made the scene circa 1990, Business Intelligence (BI) is certainly nothing new. However, over the past decade there is perhaps no category of enterprise technology that has evolved as dramatically or captured the attention of customers big and small in such a profound way. If we look at just the past five years, BI reigns supreme in terms of demand and adoption, a testament to the demonstrable value BI solutions deliver.

Emerging (hopefully) as we are from a deep, global economic crisis, the need has never been greater among businesses of all sizes across diverse industries to make informed decisions that drive sustainable productivity and efficiency gains, increase flexibility and agility and generate competitive advantages -- which is why today’s smart IT money is on SAP’s broad array of industry-leading BI solutions.

BI passes the crisis stress test with flying colors

At its most basic level, BI is about getting accurate, actionable information to decision makers in an appropriate format as quickly as possible. Businesses best able to do this did markedly better during the economic crisis than those that lacked the visibility and insight needed to quickly make appropriate, critical adjustments to their business operations.

Already well established prior to 2008, the business case for BI solutions became even more compelling as businesses with established BI strategies and deployed BI solutions proved more successful in minimizing the negative impact of the economic crisis and emerged from the crisis in positions to exploit their competitors’ weaknesses and/or capitalize on new market opportunities.

In line with this, IDC reports that while the overall software market dropped by 8% in 2009, the BI software market actually increased by 15%, and a recent IDC study of North American and European organizations found that the median ROI of BI and analytics projects was 112%. According to Forrester, the percentage of businesses implementing, upgrading or expanding BI in 2009 increased 227% over 2008. As further evidence of BI’s value, the Aberdeen Group notes that 67% of today’s “best-in-class” companies have deployed some form of self-service BI.

SAP leads the BI pack by a long shot

BI’s mettle is proven, and SAP’s leadership in BI is well established. In accordance with comprehensive evaluation criteria weighing current offering, strategy, and market presence, Forrester firmly positions SAP as a leader in its Q4 2010 Forrester Wave report on enterprise BI platforms. Forrester reports that SAP delivers “the best BI tool for each job” and notes “SAP leads the large vendor pack in self-service BI SaaS offerings.”

Gartner also positions SAP as a leader in its 2011 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms. Gartner reports that the SAP/BusinessObjects combo represents the largest installed base in the [BI] market (> 46,000 customers); the largest share of the BI platform market in terms of revenue; and the largest volumes of BI data and users (approx. 2X market average).

With such dominance in the BI market, one might think that SAP would rest a bit on its BI laurels. But nothing would be further from the truth. Recent (major) BI developments within SAP include the release of SAP BusinessObjects 4.0; integration with SAP GRC, EIM and EPM solutions; an infusion of in-memory speed; a robust BI appliance (HANA) roadmap; enhanced BI cloud delivery, and an accelerating self-service BI offering… to name just a few.

 

We’ll take a closer look at each of these SAP BI developments in future installments of the Optimal newsletters. For now, check out these additional smart-money BI predictions from leading industry analysts:

 

Pundits predict the smart money is on BI

• The worldwide BI software market will grow 9.7% to reach $10.8 billion in 2011. (Gartner)

• BI ranks fifth among CIO priorities for 2011 and has been in the top 5 for the past 5 years. (Gartner)

• The CAGR of the combined BI, analytics and performance management markets will be 7.7% through 2014. (Gartner)

• By 2014, BI solutions will be immutably tied to the fabric of business decision-making. (Gartner)

• By 2014, approximately 40% of spending on BI/analytics will go to system integrators and service providers rather than software vendors. (Gartner)

• By 2013, 33% of BI functionality will be consumed via handheld devices. (Gartner)

• By 2014, 30% of analytic applications will use in-memory functions to add scale and computational speed. (Gartner)

• By 2014, 30% of analytic applications will use proactive, predictive and forecasting capabilities. (Gartner)

• By 2013, 15% of BI deployments will combine BI, collaboration and social software into decision-making environments. (Gartner)

• Improved decision making is the key driver of BI purchases. (Gartner)

• Ease of use is surpassing functionality as the dominant buying criterion for BI. (Gartner)

• BI is the number 1 priority software application in 2011. (Forrester)

• More than 49% of companies have concrete plans to implement or expand their use of BI software within the next 24 months. (Forrester)

• Standard reporting and data visualization projects top BI implementation plans -- 59% of companies. (Forrester)

• 33% of companies have concrete plans for advanced analytics. (Forrester)

• The move toward self-service BI has been picking up steam and will gather further momentum in 2011. (Forrester)

• Maturity levels for companies' BI platforms increased 5.7% in 2010 over 2009. (Forrester)

• BI & analytics will be on the radar of most IT execs in 2011. (IDC)

• The global market for BI tools grew 13.9% during the first half of 2010, reaching $3.9 billion. (IDC)

• 96% of BI benefits are in the productivity and business process enhancement categories. (IDC)