Who's Hot and Who's Not in BI, Analytics?Who's Hot and Who's Not in BI, Analytics?

Everyone loves a horse race, so it's no surprise that industry insiders and practitioners alike want to know which BI vendors are on top, which ones are growing and which ones are losing ground. That's what made this story on IDC's 2006 BI sales stats one of the most popular articles on this site last year, and it's why this week's top story recaps IDC's BI sales stats for 2007. The biggest surprise is that software sales seemed to hold up well, despite the bad economic news that started with last year's subprime meltdown.The big picture in IDC's report, "Worldwide Business Intelligence Tools 2007 Vendor Shares," is that the total BI market grew 12.1 percent to reach $7.05 billion in 2007. That marked a third straight year of 12-percent growth, and according to report co-author and analyst Dan Vesset, "BI tools are finally entering a mass market... It's a prelude the technology is starting to gain mainstream adoption."

Worldwide BI Query, Analysis and Reporting Tools Revenue 2007
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So what about the who's-hot, who's-not analysis? Well, being limited to the market's top-five vendors, it's more like a who's warm and who's warmer report. The big three, Business Objects (acquired by SAP early this year), Cognos (acquired by IBM early this year) and Oracle (which acquired Hyperion in mid 2007) were the "laggards" among the leading "BI Query, Reporting and Analysis Tools" vendors in 2007, growing 9.0%, 10.8% and 10.8%, respectively (see chart at right). In contrast, number-four, Microsoft, grew 15.4% and number-five, SAS, grew 18.3%.

These results aren't surprising given that the bigger the base, the harder it is to rack up increases, but I'd also point out that no other large vendor is as vulnerable to Microsoft (with its bundled SQL Reporting Services) as is Business Objects (with its Crystal Reports line of products). One could also guess that many would-be Business Objects, Cognos and Hyperion customers spent at least part of 2007 waiting for acquisition dust to settle.

Worldwide Advanced Analytics Tools Revenue 2007
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In the "Advanced Analytics" camp, IDC's stats show that Microsoft, SPSS and SAS were the fastest-growing vendors among the top five with 20.0%, 17.8% and 15.2% sales increases, respectively (see chart at left). Visual Numerics grew 9.3% and Teradata treaded water with 3.0% growth. Mind you, SAS and SPSS are in a league of their own with $440 million and $205 million in revenue, respectively, while all the others were in the Single-A, sub-$50 million ballpark.

SAS has plenty to crow about in IDC's stats, so it has once again purchased rights to distribute an excerpt of the report as a free download. Unfortunately, this year's excerpt only covers the top-five vendors in each category (last year's excerpt covered 21 BI tools vendors and 13 analytics vendors). If you're prepared to pay $3,500, you can purchase the complete "Worldwide Business Intelligence Tools 2007 Vendor Shares" report, which details sales among the top-15 vendors in BI in 2007 - a list that adds MicroStrategy, Information Builders, Actuate, QlikTech, Panorama Software, IBM (without Cognos), and TIBCO to the companies mentioned above.

Last year's report reveals that the fastest-growing vendors are generally the upstarts that don't show up among the top ten, which makes it all the more disappointing to see a less-inclusive excerpt and full report from IDC this year.Everyone loves a horse race, so it's no surprise that industry insiders and practitioners alike want to know which BI vendors are on top, which ones are growing and which ones are losing ground. That's why this week's top story recaps IDC's BI sales stats and top-five vendor comparisons for 2007... but it's dissappointing to see a less-inclusive report this year.