APAC BI market to reach $1.4 billion in 2014

The market for business intelligence (BI) platforms in Asia Pacific (APAC) is expected to grow 7.4 per cent and reach almost $1.4 billion in revenues in 2014 as as data discovery and mobility create a revival in spending by business users.

The market for the platforms would be more than $1.6 billion by 2017, according to a technology researcher Gartner Inc.

''Information intensive initiatives are popular in organisations in APAC's accelerating economies, because information is a competitive differentiator. We expect this to continue as organisations pursue regulatory compliance, performance management and overarching enterprise information management initiatives,'' said Gartner research director Bhavish Sood.

In APAC, the top four mega-vendors - SAP, Microsoft, Oracle and IBM - controlled 72.2 per cent of the BI platform market in 2012, up from 65 per cent in 2011.

However, Gartner analysts say that business units increasingly prefer data discovery solutions, such as Tibco Spotfire, QlikTech and Tableau Software, while their counterparts in IT are still more comfortable procuring from megavendors.

''Given the current economic climate of slow growth, Chief Information Officers are looking for solutions that need minimum servicing and can deliver fast time to value. These demands are being met by packaged analytical applications, preconfigured BI appliances and intuitive data discovery tools,'' Sood said.

Australia will remain the region's biggest BI platform software market in the next few years, reaching $386.2 million in 2014 (up 5.4 per cent over last year).

China will remain the second-largest BI software market in Asia Pacific through 2017, reaching $217.3 million.