Business Intelligence (BI) Poised for Significant Growth in the U.S. SMB Market

Cloud Services Bundled with BI are Gaining Traction as Cost Decreases & Ease-of-Use Rises, says AMI

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--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.

“Many SMB business decision makers (BDMs) and technology decision makers (TDMs) are looking for data-driven business analytics and intelligence beyond spreadsheet-driven charts”

“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 [e-mail] or visit our www.ami-partners.com.

About Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.

AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence — with a strong focus on global small and medium businesses (SMBs), and extending into large enterprises and home-based businesses. The AMI-Partners mission is to empower clients for success with the highest quality data, business strategy perspectives and “go-to-market” solutions. AMI was founded in 1996. Since its inception, the firm has built a world-class management team, each with ten to fifteen years’ experience in IT, telecom, online communications or multimedia.

AMI-Partners has helped shape the go-to-market SMB strategies of more than 150 leading IT, internet, telecommunications and business services companies. The firm is well known for its IT and internet adoption-based segmentation of the SMB markets; its annual retainership services based on global SMB tracking surveys in more than 30 countries; and its proprietary database of SMBs, Cloud services studies and SMB channel partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The firm invests significantly in collecting survey-based information from several thousand SMBs annually, and is considered the premier source for global SMB trends and analysis.