In New Zealand, spending on Business Intelligence analytics will grow 9.3 percent to reach NZ$94.2 million in 2015, according to recent findings from analyst firm Gartner.
Across the Tasman, Australian organisations will spend $694 million on BI and analytics software in 2015, an increase of 12.1 percent from last year with double digit growth rates forecast in both countries for the next three years to 2018.
In comparison, the global business intelligence (BI) and analytics software market is projected to grow 6.9 percent in 2015, with sales predicted to total $22 billion, up from $20.4 billion in 2014.
Following years of modest growth, Gartner believes spending on BI and analytics software will rise to double digit growth again by 2018, reaching $21.4 billion worldwide.
Consequently, IT decision makers, including CIOs in Australia and New Zealand (and worldwide) ranked business intelligence and analytics as their top technology priority for 2015 in Gartner’s annual survey of more than 2,800 CIOs.
Speaking in the keynote at the Gartner Business Intelligence, Analytics & Information Management Summit in Sydney, Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst Andrew White claimed that more than half of new investments in business intelligence software are now going to data discovery and self-service.
“The vendors that have been so successful in the past are now having a hard time transitioning to this new market reality,” he said.
“New vendors have emerged and seized the opportunity, with great vision and iron execution. And unbelievably quickly.
"But the other half of the market is still about management reporting, performance management and dashboards.”
The analysts said business intelligence and information management professionals are facing three primary dilemmas:
1) Centralisation versus decentralisation
"Over the years, we've established clear best practices for business intelligence and information management,” White added.
“Our informal surveys at Gartner events indicate that two-thirds of organisations have created a BI competency centre, or broader information management competency centre.”
However, according to Gartner, the use of self-service BI has increased by a factor of 10 in the last two years, and BI teams are actively encouraging it - this is decentralisation.
White said that the role of BI has shifted from being something to help monitor and manage the organisation, to information itself being a monetised product or revenue stream.