In the last 14 years I have been living the expansion, consolidation and innovation of the BI market. No longer is BI a set of tools available only to the privileged few in IT or line of business analysts; BI is becoming ubiquitous in many organizations, and it is rapidly reaching into many areas of our lives as consumers. So one may ask, has BI reached full maturity; have we reached a saturation point with only limited evolutionary, incremental value in the years to come?Quite the opposite! While Gartner saw a slowdown of growth for BI Software from 17% in 2011 to 6.8% in 2012 to total $13.1bn worldwide*, we are seeing a tremendous shift in the industry with a series of innovations that are game changing and will deliver growth, if organizations can effectively adopt and transform.

Innovation in BI and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) solutions is happening globally. Solutions that help organizations manage a variety of issues from dealing with big data, a mobile workforce with BYOD, desktop visualization tools, to name a few in the spotlight. However, very few vendors can offer a platform that covers the required use cases across the enterprise. Fueled by its ongoing innovation in its BI/EPM platform and its Real-Time Data Platform, which includes SAP HANA, Sybase IQ and integration components, it is no surprise that SAP continues to be the market leader in BI Software and a challenger in the database and EIM space. By harnessing the in-memory computing power of SAP HANA with the data discovery, visualization and reporting capabilities provided by SAP BI4.1, organizations have the opportunity to delve into information faster, more effectively than ever before. As an SAP partner and trusted advisor to our customers, we have experienced firsthand how these innovations can help transform entire business processes while simplifying the IT landscape. This revolution that SAP is currently leading will not stop here as other players in the industry are forced to re-think.

The winners shall be our customers that will have the opportunity to re-imagine their business to drive competitiveness and profitability. I see a tremendous growth opportunity in BI/EPM solutions in the next years as customers adopt these new capabilities and transform their organizations effectively for BI. “Analytics like never before” is a theme used by BI evangelist Timo Elliott. I couldn't agree more.

*Market Share Analysis: Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance 

Management, 2012, Dan Sommer, Bhavish Sood, May 7, 2013.

Marc Haberland is the Managing Director of Clariba. He looks back on 14 years of Business Intelligence (BI) and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) experience across many industries throughout Europe, the Middle East and North America. Marc currently leads his team of BI experts in Qatar, the UAE, Oman and Spain to deliver projects across the Gulf, KSA, in Europe and North America. Prior to working in the BI space Marc held various management positions in sales, marketing and product management with Picis and Hitachi Europe. Marc received his Masters in Technical Marketing and his Bachelor in Electronics Engineering from Polytechnical University in Munich, Germany. 

Marc can be contacted at marc.haberland@clariba.com