STORY ON BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE – Part-1

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Estimated market for BI in India and major players

Gartner says BI software revenue in India is forecasted to reach revenue of $81.5 million in 2012, a 15.6% increase over 2011 and grow to US$111.2 million by the end of 2016. Also, worldwide BI software market revenue is slated to grow by 8.7 percent to reach $12.7 billion in 2012. Forrester research group claims that globally, the BI market is unaffected by the current economic crisis and is expected to grow to $14 billion by 2014.

Prashant Tewari, Country Manager, Business Analytics, IBM software group, IBM India says, the market is estimated to be about US$40-50 million for BI/DW platform/products and about US$100-150 million for services. He is hopeful that with the growth rates hovering around 20%, it’s expected to go up significantly as the competition grows stronger and analytics starts playing a crucial role. IDC too pegs the Indian BI market at around 1,200 crores for FY 2012-13.

SAS, one of the leaders in the Indian analytics market believes that the analytics and BI market in India are growing at a CAGR of around 20% with SAS India holding the lions share in the advanced analytics market. Adding to it, Sanjay Mehta, CEO, MAIA Intelligence, said that "Organizations continue to turn to BI as a vital tool for smarter, more agile and efficient business, upping the current usage scenario from just an information delivery mechanism. Our estimate of BI market is expanding at the rate of 20% compounding year on year."

As per, the latest Dataquest research report on top business intelligence and analytics companies in India, the list is as follows:

ABIBA Systems, Active Cubes, Aditi technologies, Annik Technologies, Enteg Systems, IBM, iCreate Software, Information Builders, Informatica, Marlabs, MAIA Business Intelligence, Microstrategy, Mu Sigma, Oracle, Persistent, Qliktech, Ramco Systems, SAP and Teradata.

Biggies like SAP, SAS, IBM and Oracle as usual find their places in the list. But what comes as a finding is the emergence of domain specific BI & analytics software providers like ABIBA, iCreate and Manthan. These companies have created a lot of buzz in the recent past by winning the Red Herring Awards.

Factors pushing the adoption of Analytics in India

Organizations have already initiated or completed implementing integrated transaction systems to reliably capture the business process related data – e.g. Banks with Core Banking, Enterprise with ERP. As businesses are looking to ride the growth wave, the focus is on delivering updated real-time data to the managements allowing companies to intelligently utilize analytics led solutions.

Gartner has identified three major demand-side factors that continue to expand their usage and drive BI platform revenue growth:

  • Consumerization of BI: BI tools must be simple, mobile and "fun" in order to expand their use and value. Business employees are demanding the same experience from their BI tools that they have come to enjoy with their personal tools. The need for more intuitive and interactive BI tools and applications extends to users on the move, but the vast majority of organizations are yet to embrace mobile BI. This is set to change very quickly with the proliferation of Apple's iPhone and iPad products.
  • Support for Extreme Data Performance; Emerging Data Sources: Capabilities that enable the analysis of large, volatile and diverse data will open up possibilities for a broad range of new, high-value BI applications and will be another drive to the BI growth. This includes in-memory technology and social and content analytics. These capabilities combined with the support for extreme data volumes and consumer-oriented tools opens up newpossibilities for a wider range of BI applications.
  • BI as a Decision Platform: Gartner's user surveys show that "improved decision making" is the top driver of BI purchases. Capabilities that will evolve BI from an information delivery system to a decision platform will increase the value of BI and drive its growth.

Other factors:

  • When compared to simple analyzation of historical information and relying on gut instincts, analytics allows enterprises to predict effectively giving them competitive advantage, lowering their risks, and providing the insights needed to plan the future.
  • Ramaswamy fromMarlabs believes that the reason why organizations in India take to analytics at an earlier stage of maturity than their global counterparts is probably due to a clearer return on their investments.
  • Based on a report from KPMG’s - Another focus area for Banks in India is the use of Business Intelligence for regulatory reporting, customer and corporate purposes. As in core banking, Banks are getting their data aggregation layers in place to facilitate projection of data in the form of static and dynamic reporting capability. This would be a logical extension of operational data aggregation using core banking systems.

Keep following us as the next part of this article will throw some lights on Verticals/Domains seeing heightened adoption of BI & Analytics in India and the way BI is being used by the companies.

Blog by : Ms. Jasneet Bagga , Senior Business Analyst, Ramco Systems.