SAP, Business Objects market leaders: IDC

BANGALORE, INDIA: SAP and Business Objects, a SAP company, announced that IDC has reported that each leads in one of the two major segments of the Performance Management Tools and Applications market based on software license and maintenance revenue. The aggregate Performance Management market represents $15.4 billion out of the total $22.1 billion Business Analytics Software market.

The market analysis, titled "Worldwide Business Analytics Software 2008-2012 Forecast and 2007 Vendor Shares," found that SAP leads in performance management applications and Business Objects leads in the performance management tools market. Together these two segments comprise the broad market for performance management tools and applications.

"The IDC data presented in our 2008 business analytics report finds that SAP and Business Objects each lead a major segment of the performance management market," said Dan Vesset, vice president, Business Analytics Solutions, IDC. "The two companies have come together and are balancing the goals of remaining open for non-SAP customers while optimizing their solutions for the SAP platform. This openness and ability to satisfy both the SAP and non-SAP customer bases-along with the breadth of Business Objects and SAP's enterprise performance management solutions-are catalysts for continued market growth."

According to the IDC report, which evaluated the two companies separately as in 2007 they had not yet merged, SAP and Business Objects held 11.2 percent and 7.6 percent respectively of the total 2007 market share for performance management tools and applications. The report also found that SAP's share of the performance management tools and application market grew at 19.3 percent, higher than the market as a whole.

IDC attributes SAP and Business Objects' leadership to the following factors. SAP continues to see strength in sales of its performance management applications across a diverse set of business processes. In addition, Business Objects showed continued strength in growing its business intelligence tools revenue in 2007. The company, acquired by SAP in the past year, contributed a significant install base, broad product portfolio, strong brand recognition and experienced development and marketing resources. Business Objects will expand SAP's diversity and offers improved reach into the small and medium-sized business market segment with its Crystal Reports software.

"It is gratifying to see that SAP and Business Objects' vision and execution have been validated by our customers, partners and one of the leading industry analyst firms," said Sanjay Poonen, general manager and senior vice president, Performance Optimization Applications, Business Objects. "We have experienced rapid growth in the EPM market, catapulting us to the top position in the market, over competitors with outdated products. Our EPM portfolio expands beyond finance to provide end-to-end performance management capabilities across the organization to ensure both profitable and compliant business performance. SAP and Business Objects' diversity of EPM offerings-combined with the leading business intelligence and governance, risk and compliance solutions, all with more modern, user-centric application design-puts us ahead of traditional vendors who possess harder-to-use, incomplete EPM solutions."