Gartner has predicted that the business intelligence market will be worth $18.3 billion (14.74 billion) by the end of this year, thanks to executives realising the agility modern BI software offers.
However, the following few years will see its popularity decelerate as the technology becomes mainstream, the analyst house said. This means the market will be worth $22.8 billion (18.37 billion) by 2020, which reflects an increase of 19% over the next three years, compared to a huge 63.6% between 2015 and the end of this year.
Research VP Rita Sallam explained that modern BI and analytics tools have come on leaps and bounds and the market is expanding much faster than traditional insight tools that don't perhaps offer the same levels of agility.
"Purchasing decisions continue to be influenced heavily by business executives and users who want more agility and the option for small personal and departmental deployments to prove success," she explained. "Enterprise-friendly buying models have become more critical to successful deployments."
She added that other factors are influencing the acceleration of the market too, including an increased need for governance, more complex data, demand for embedded analytics, the boom in devices, sensors and people that are forcing businesses to make faster decisions and marketplaces that have evolved to help organisations buy and sell analytic capabilities.
Gartner explained that cloud technologies are enabling the modern BI landscape to change and grow. Thanks to the demand from businesses flocking to the cloud, it said, new vendors are able to be disruptive.
"Organisations will benefit from the many new and innovative vendors continuing to emerge, as well as significant investment in innovation from large vendors and venture capital-funded startups," Sallam added.
"They do, however, need to be careful to limit their technical debt that can occur when multiple stand-alone solutions that demonstrate business value quickly, turn into production deployments without adequate attention being paid to design, implementation and support."
