Worldwide Business Intelligence (BI) platform software revenue exceeded $5.1 billion in 2007, a 13 percent increase from 2006 revenue of $4.5 billion, according to Gartner. During the course of 2007, the three largest publicly traded BI companies (Business Objects, Cognos and Hyperion) were acquired.

"Taking all the consolidation into account, the large stack vendors Oracle, SAP, IBM and Microsoft have raised their market presence during the course of 2007 from just over one-fifth of the market to owning close to two-thirds by the end of the year," said Dan Sommer, senior research analyst at Gartner. "That marks a pendulum shift from a market driven by best-of-breeds to one dominated by mega vendors. However, many smaller independent BI vendors grew faster than the market, and we expect continued innovation and new vendors to enter the market."

Business Objects was the number one vendor in worldwide BI platform software revenue in 2007, accounting for 18.2 percent of the market. With SAP's acquisition of Business Objects, the combined company would account for 26.3 percent of the global market. The merger of IBM and Cognos would make it in a virtual tie for the number two position with 14.7 percent market share. Similarly, accounting for all Hyperion BI platform revenue under Oracle would increase its market share to 10.6 percent.

Year-over-year growth in North America slowed drastically to 5 percent (down from 16 percent growth in 2006), but this was offset by buoyant spending in the rest of the world. "A weakening dollar and a slowing economy means vendors will have to get used to a much larger proportion of vendor revenue coming from outside of the United States," Sommer said. "BI spending in the emerging regions of the world continued to grow aggressively, but also countries in Western Europe, especially Germany and France showed surprising growth when discounting currency fluctuations, after several years of morose spending."