Business Intelligence: Who's Benefitting From the Boom?

A new research report from AMI Partners reveals some promising trends in the business intelligence market. As BI sales heat up in certain regions, The VAR Guy wonders who will benefit most: Traditional BI software companies, open source alternatives or software as a service (SaaS) options? Here’s The VAR Guy’s best guess.

First, some background from AMI Partners: The research firm says 20 percent of mid-sized companies in Brazil and Mexico that are not using a business intelligence solution are expected to acquire the software this year.

The VAR Guy believes BI will enjoy similar growth across North America, Europe and Asia. But the options for businesses and channel partners can be overwhelming. There are:

Alas, many of the closed-source options have reputations for being complex and expensive. But BI companies have gradually polished and positioned new offerings for the mid-market. An example: SAS Institute’s offerings for small and midsize customers.

Open Alternatives

Still, open source options from Jaspersoft and Pentaho continue to gain momentum. Both companies landed on The VAR Guy’s Open Source 50, which tracks the most promising open source partner programs.

Pentaho upped the anti in February 2009 by introducing a Gold Partner Program level. And some IT consulting firms — such as OpenBI of Chicago — are creating SaaS solutions by blending Pentaho’s BI software with Amazon.com’s Elastic Compute Cloud.

For solutions providers, the message is clear: BI sales opportunities — and deployment options — continue to grow. If you were a BI reseller five years ago and left the market because the software was too expensive or too complex to deploy, it’s time to come back and give the industry a second look.

The VAR Guy is updated multiple times daily. Don’t miss a single post. Subscribe to his newsletter, RSS feed, Twitter feed and Resource Center.