Inside the Briefcase
Business Intelligence Poised for Significant Growth in the U.S. SMB Market
June 16, 2011 No CommentsSOURCE: AMI
Implementing business intelligence/business analytics (BI/A) software has become an increasingly important priority for small and medium businesses (SMBs). According to AMI-Partners’ recent study U.S. SMB Cloud Playbook, the opportunity for BI/A software as part of an SaaS-bundled offer will increase by 25% through 2015, to $500 million.
“The study’s findings reflect two factors,” says Donald Best of AMI-Partners. “SMBs are becoming more aware of the benefits of mining their data for insights that can result in savings and competitive advantage. In addition, the availability of BI/SaaS, as part of a larger bundle, makes this a very attractive and cost-effective proposition,” Best continued.
In addition to SaaS-driven bundles, there is significant uptake for BI/A solutions bundled with cloud infrastructure, or infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and unified communications (UC) offerings. Among U.S. SMBs deploying IaaS and UC, over one third are interested in including BI as part of the bundle; this is second only to CRM, where the interest level is approximately 37%.
“Many SMB business decision makers (BDMs) and technology decision makers (TDMs) are looking for data-driven business analytics and intelligence beyond spreadsheet-driven charts,” says Best. “BI/SaaS can provide them with powerful analytic tools to enable cost savings as well as competitive advantage.”
BI uptake is just one change in technology adoption being impacted by a confluence of factors that are giving cloud adoption stronger momentum among SMBs. Key among these is the growing ubiquity of broadband, mobility and smart devices, which have collectively raised the level of data and application access, collaboration and interest in cloud services.
About the Study
AMI’s 2011 U.S. SMB Cloud Playbook – Strategic and Tactical GTM Planning Guide provides a market segmentation-based perspective on cloud-related dynamics shaping up in the SMB space, including:
• Cloud-related needs among four types of SMB segments; behavioral and usage characteristics; future adoption plans
• Cloud and ICT spending, market opportunity, price sensitivity
• Service bundling preferences and demand uplift; vendor value propositions and offers/bundles
• Purchase channel mix and capabilities
For more information about this study, AMI-Partners, or our global SMB research, please call 212-944-5100, e-mail ask_ami@ami-partners.com.
