24 Jan, 2012 - Lachlan James

Everyone loves a good statistic, and right now the hard facts are telling us that 2012 is set to be a bumper year in Business Intelligence (BI) – so much for the year of the Dragon.

BI and analytics have deposed cloud computing as top enterprise technology priority for the New Year according to a Gartner survey of 2,335 CIOs.

Additionally, The Corporate IT Forum’s annual survey on corporate IT strategies flagged more positive developments for the BI market over the ensuing 12 months. The study, compiled via responses garnered from almost 700 IT professionals between October and November 2011, revealed a 10.7 percent rise in the number or survey participants planning to implement a BI strategy for 2012. In addition, 45.8 percent of respondents indicated that they already have a BI strategy in place.

A new survey from consultancy firm, MorganFranklin, found that 75 percent of respondents intend to increase or maintain BI spending during 2012.

And, TechTarget’s 2012 IT Priorities Survey found that 50 percent of those surveyed planned on increasing BI spending by 10 percent or more over the next year. The 2012 TechTarget survey polled more than 2,600 IT professionals and business analysts in a mix of job positions, from IT staffers, engineers and programmers to IT directors, managers and architects as well as CIOs and CTOs.