DM review has an interesting article on the Business Analytics market written by IDC team of Dan Vesset and Brian McDonough, it has a lot of interesting inputs and insights, Below are excerpts from the same

IDC's research into the BA market has identified that the market moves in 15-year cycles.

First Period - 1975 to 1990 - Production reporting on mainframes.

Second Period - 1990 to 2005, end user-friendlier client/server-based BI. Eventually query, reporting and OLAP technology migrated from client/server to Web-based architecture with the development of broad suites of BI platforms.

Third Period - 2005 to 2020 - Focus on expanding the reach of BA to more users both inside and outside the organization.

How is the expanding reach to be implemented?

through two primary methods - faster and easier access to accurate and relevant information using appropriate tools and integrating or embedding BA functionality into business process sets.

DataWarehouse Related

The number of source systems feeding a typical data warehouse tended to be between two and nine source systems, according to 56 percent of the respondents.

- The current size and expected 12-month growth rate of data warehouses, according to the survey results, showed that

- 40 percent of data warehouses are more than 1TB in total size

- 18 percent of organizations expecting their largest data warehouse to at least double in size during the next year.

- The largest percent (37 percent) expect a 25 to 50 percent growth rate for their data warehouse.

- There are still a significant number of smaller warehouses, but the expected growth suggests increased need for storage and scalable tools to sift through the data. The 2006 survey, as in previous years, shows the expected growth rate of larger data warehouses to outpace that of smaller data warehouses.

- Respondents at 13 percent of organizations refresh their data warehouse in real time. The data suggests that while organizations are interested in real-time refreshes, such projects are going to take longer than expected due to both technical and business reasons.

Usage:

IDC research conducted prior to this survey indicated that 70 percent of organizations are planning to increase the number of internal users of BI tools over the next 12 months.

Additionally, 33 percent of organizations plan to provide direct BI tool access to suppliers, 40 percent to customers/members and 20 percent to government agencies.

Success Rate of Various BA Project Components

Future Outlook:

Consolidation of the number of query and reporting tools. - Covered in an earlier post

Frequency of BA software upgrades. BA software vendors want and need rapid adoption of newer versions of their software to increase satisfaction levels and reduce support costs.According to the survey, 45 percent of organizations upgrade BI software within the first year or as soon as it becomes available. Close to 80 percent of organizations upgrade their BI software within two years of release.

Interest in open source BI software - Interest among respondents for these offerings was modest, with 18 percent evaluating the products. However, the majority of respondents indicated no interest in the coming year. These tools will need to mature and prove themselves in the market before wider adoption can occur. Companies will continue to feel comfortable in allocating budgets toward commercial products, especially as system integrators largely choose to recommend these products and offer resources skilled in their implementation.

Interest in subscription-based BA software. A healthy 30 percent of respondents indicated they have interest in such an offering. Pricing is definitely a factor in adopting subscription-based software products, but outsourcing the support and maintenance is also greatly appealing to resource-constrained companies.

Source: 1

Prashanth Rai