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Worldwide business intelligence (BI) platform, analytic applications and performance management (PM) software revenue reached $10.5 billion in 2010, a 13.4 percent increase from 2009 revenue of $9.3 billion, according to Gartner, Inc.

“In 2010, the global resurgence from stimulus packages, general improvement in the macro-economy, and new product releases contributed to a surge in BI software spending,” says Dan Sommer, principal research analyst at Gartner. “BI spending has far surpassed IT budget growth overall for several years, and it is clear that BI continues to be a technology at the center of information-driven initiatives in organizations. Vendors aggressively market their capabilities in this area, so revenue growth is as much a function of vendor push as a demand pull.”

The four large "stack" vendors (SAP, Oracle, IBM and Microsoft) continue to consolidate the market, owning 59 percent of the market share. In the BI platform and CPM suite segments, they hold close to two-thirds market share, while in analytic applications, SAS dominates the market. There is ongoing BI tools consolidation in the IT-department, while, paradoxically, a new wave of lighter footprint data discovery tools and analytic applications are proliferating in business units. Business users care less about who they buy from; they want domain-specific functionality and usability that meet their needs.

There was little change year-on-year in terms of vendor rankings. SAP remained the No. 1 vendor in combined worldwide BI, analytics and PM software revenue in 2010, accounting for 23 percent of the market, followed by Oracle, SAS Institute, IBM and Microsoft.

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