The business analytics market grew by 10% in 2008 with Oracle having the largest share in terms of revenue, a market research firm said. Over the next five years, sales are expected to continue to rise at a compound annual growth rate of 7.2%.

From 2009 through 2013, business analytics sales will be driven by corporations' need for decision support to assist in cost cutting, customer acquisition and retention, and compliance processes, according to a recent report co-authored by analysts DanVesset, Mary Wardley and Brian McDonough.

In 2008, Oracle led the overall market, followed in order by SAP, IBM, SAS and Microsoft, the report said. Rounding out the top 10 were Teradata, Fair Isaac, Informatica, Infor and MicroStrategy, respectively.

IDC divides the business analytics software market into four primary segments: analytic applications, business intelligence tools, data warehousing platform software and spatial information analytics tools. In taking a look at the top 10 vendors, Oracle is present in all market segments with a broad portfolio of business intelligence tools, analytic applications and data warehousing software. As a result, Oracle has the highest diversity of offerings.

Nevertheless, the business applications maker received less than a quarter of its total software revenue from business analytics software. "It will remain to be seen if Oracle can use its leading position and yet lower than some of its key competitors' reliance on business analytics software to its advantage in its go-to-market strategy," the report said.

SAP's market standing was helped by the 2008 purchase of Business Objects, combined with other acquisitions and internal product development. As a result, the vendor has a broad portfolio of BI tools, analytic applications and data warehouse generation tools.

Despite its second-place position, SAP had the highest momentum of all the business analytics vendors. "This indicates that despite trailing Oracle in size and share, SAP more than compensated for it in revenue in 2008,"IDC said. "SAP also had the second-highest diversity confirming its broad portfolio and standing in the individual segments of the market."

IBM's leading position was boosted by the completion of its acquisition of Cognos, which added BI tools and analytic applications to the company's already strong presence in the data warehouse generation and management segments of the market.

"IBM was third on the diversity ranking, fourth in momentum, and had a less than 25% reliance on business analytics software," IDC said. "The latter is due to IBM's significant presence in various application development and deployment, systems software, and collaborative applications market, which do not directly contribute to the business analytics revenue."

Fourth-place SAS' broad portfolio spans all business analytics market segments and is exclusively dedicated to this market. "The company leads in the advanced analytics tools segment and is within the top two vendors in two other market segments,"IDC said.

Microsoft's fifth largest market share was mostly driven by its position in the data warehousing and BI segments of the market. However, the software maker is starting to also focus more on analytic applications through its Dynamics software division.

"Microsoft was fifth on the diversity ranking but third in momentum," IDC said. "The latter indicator is a testament to the company's strong growth rate in the business analytics market in 2008."