Here are several excerpts from an article by Linda Tucci, Senior News Writer for SearchSMB.com, Business Intelligence Now a Given for SMBs:
According to a recent report from consultancy Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn., companies are spending more on Business Intelligence (BI) and using it for more things, from complying with regulatory reporting requirements to measuring system performance. Use of the technology has spread from the confines of upper management to operations people, managers and even customers, pushing what Gartner predicts is a solid 9.5% annual growth through 2010.
It’s very much a growing market for SMBs,” said Michael Speyer, who covers the SMB market for Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. The push is coming from both mall and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and vendors eager to exploit a promising software niche.“Companies now realize they can get more out of the data assets they have collected. The growth is also a reflection of the fact that IT systems in the midmarket are uite mature,” Speyer said. “BI is relatively less well adopted, compared to other types of applications.”
No question the big guys have taken notice. Microsoft, Oracle and SAP AG have set their sights on the BI platform market, muscling in on pure-play BI vendors. Indeed, the variety of choices can overwhelm, said Michael Schiff, principal of MAS Strategies, a BI and data warehousing consulting firm in Reston, Va.
The first step is an IT assessment, Schiff and others said. BI buyers need to identify the various data sources their organizations draw on to do business. And, if the company uses a bunch of technologies from different vendors, a vendor-agnostic specialist, such as Business Objects, may well be the way to go, Schiff said.
Business Objects’ marketing vice president, Todd Rowe, pegs the growth of BI in the midmarket as five times faster than at large companies. “Smaller companies are producing massive amounts of information, but what they don’t have is line of sight into their business, so they can make real-time decisions,” Rowe said.
Check out the complete source article for more.
