London, UK, 7 February 2006 - New license revenue in the worldwide business intelligence (BI) software market is poised for constant growth through 2009, when the market is projected to reach $3 billion in 2009, according to the latest forecasts by Gartner Inc. In 2006, the market is estimated to reach 2.5 billion, a six percent increase from 2005.

Speaking to almost 700 attendees at its annual Business Intelligence Summit in London today, Gartner said that forward-thinking organizations are looking to BI as a driver for business innovation and growth.

"Companies around the world have purchased more than US $40 billion worth of enterprise applications, including ERP, CRM and HR, during the past few years," said Colleen Graham, principal research analyst at Gartner. "This has generated significant volumes of data in support of the operational processes they automate. By investing in BI, companies can further leverage their enterprise application investments and turn the torrent of data into meaningful insight to better measure performance, respond more quickly to market changes and opportunities and comply with an increasingly complex regulatory environment."

Gartner also cautioned that significant inhibitors to the successful deployment and adoption of BI exist. It said that limited BI skills and competencies, combined with a perceived high total cost of ownership (TCO) and difficulty in quantifying the direct business benefits of better performance and improved decision making will continue to hamper adoption.

New findings from *Gartner's 2006 survey of 1400 Chief Information Officers (CIOs) found that Business Intelligence was the most highly ranked technology priority in 2006, with CIOs reporting plans to increase their BI budgets by an average of 4.8 percent in 2006.

"BI is now part of an organisation's license to operate, as every enterprise needs to manage information," said Frank Buytendijk, research vice-president and conference chair at Gartner. "However, BI has not yet achieved the necessary level of strategic importance and is not included as an essential part of corporate planning activities. Moving forward, BI will become part of business innovation itself. Sharing information with customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders increases loyalty and in many industries provides competitive differentiation. BI will become pervasive in operational and workplace applications as organisations seek to optimise their business."

To use BI to drive business transformation Gartner advised organisations to:

* Develop user skills and a culture in the use and analysis of information to be an integral part of achieving business objectives and driving transformation
* Change the way BI is integrated into business processes
* Change the way the information architecture and application portfolio are implemented and managed

"There are certainly no quick fixes where BI is concerned. There are multiple decisions and choices that need to be made on the road to making BI effective and pervasive in any organisation. These decisions cannot be made in isolation and must be considered within the wider context of the business. One of the key decisions is to move beyond a BI vision that focuses almost exclusively on information dissemination and start integrating BI into an organisation's strategic planning activities," added Mr Buytendijk.

Regional Perspective
Gartner predicts that from 2004 to 2009, significant regional differences will be evident in the purchase patterns of BI software. The worldwide BI software market will grow at a 7.3 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for this period, while the smaller and emerging markets of Latin America and the Asia/Pacific region are forecasted to significantly exceed the worldwide growth rate, at 11.3 percent and 13.6 percent respectively. North America, Western Europe and Japan are expected to see growth slightly below the worldwide rate of between 6.4 and 6.9 percent as organisations rationalise past purchases.

* Note for editors: 2006 CIO Survey conducted by Gartner Executive Programme (EXP), a unit of Gartner.