5 Top Business Intelligence Tool Vendors According to IDC

Tool Vendor's Stability, More than anything else, this is probably the most important measure. In my opinion, this is even more important than the current functionalities that the tool itself provide, for the simple reason that if the company is going to be around for a while, it will be able to make enhancements to its business intelligence tool.

On the other hand, if the company is likely to be out of business in six months, then it doesn't matter that it has the state-of-the-art features, because sooner or later these features will be out-of-date.

Now let us evaluate the BI tools market in the context of what has been identified as a 15-year market cycle that began in 2005. Historical analysis suggests that most markets experience a typical s-curve pattern. This pattern begins with early modest growth, which is followed by accelerated growth and then a mature period with a slowdown in growth, and it ends with a decline until a new market cycle resumes.

The BI tools market is currently in its third s-curve market cycle and is only in the third year of the current cycle. Therefore, IDC expects acceleration in the BI tools market starting in 2009.

The Top 5 Business Intelligence Tool Vendors According to IDC :

• Business Objects
• SAS
• Cognos
• Microsoft
• Hyperion

Because each tool in the business intelligence arena has different functionalities, the criteria for the "Buy vs. Build" decision is different for each type.. However, there are some issues that SAS needs to watch out for. Most notably, SAS "has a reputation for being very hard to use," states the Gartner report.

"In particular, many of the data manipulation and advanced analysis tasks require the SAS programming language; this is an advantage to people with those skills, but a significant barrier to those organizations without them."