DATA WAREHOUSING & DATA MARTS HIT MAINSTREAM MARKET,
ENCOURAGING EUROPEAN MARKET GROWTH
With competition increasing in all vertical markets across Western Europe, companies are seeking ways to gain a competitive edge over their rivals. Data warehousing is one way in which companies can offer more to their customers. The number of implementations of data warehouses and data marts is increasing, and this trend is expected to continue up to and beyond the end of the millennium.
A new study by Frost & Sullivan, the international marketing consulting company, reports that a number of factors are driving the total European data warehousing software market. These include the introduction of data marts in to the mainstream market, the explosion of Microsoft into the data warehousing market, the developments in the telecommunications markets which offer great opportunities to data warehousing vendors, and the creation of more end-users through the Internet, Intranet and Extranet. The total revenues for the Western European data warehousing software market in 1997 had risen to US$2.0 billion, reflecting a growth of 22.7 per cent. Frost & Sullivan expect to see the market grow by US$8.2 billion over the forecast years, thus leading to an overall growth of 41 0 per cent by 2004 (reaching US$10.2 billion in that year).
Anoop Ubhey, Research Analyst at Frost & Sullivan, says: "Customer awareness and education plays a very important role and needs to be rectified for the continued success of design and modelling tools. However, the biggest change I have seen in the market is the move to integrated 'best of breed' solutions. There is a growing demand in the market for these solutions. Also, alliances and partnerships play a major role in this market. Many vendors will have partnerships with database vendors and hardware vendors so that they can integrate their products to offer a total solution."
Data warehousing is still considered to be in its infancy. There have been a few data warehousing projects which have failed in the past, thus deterring many new customers from entering the market.
However, Frost & Sullivan believe that soft are vendors have taken giant steps to improve that.
Microsoft announced a comprehensive data warehouse initiative revolving around the next version of SW Server. The corporation plans to offer numerous integrated data warehouse components - either by itself, or through partners. The key components are an improved SW Server which supports parallel query processing, a meta data repository, a data transformation engine, advanced replication and administration utilities, a report library, and a data warehouse consulting methodology. Microsoft's announcement represents a creditable attempt to provide customers with a complete solution for building and managing data warehouses. Microsoft is attempting to capture the high ground by garnering industry support behind a key set of API's which will foster snap-in integration of third party and Microsoft tools.
With the deregulation of the telecommunications market in Europe, the market has opened up. There are no longer barriers between local and long distance calling, cable TV, broadcasting and wireless services. As competition intensifies and the network becomes a commodity, service providers are faced with the need to reduce costs and to add value to their services, ensuring differentiation.
Once a customer can choose between different carriers, customer care and marketing intelligence become strategic functions in retaining and gaining market share. All this change demands that a carrier's supporting infrastructure be responsive and flexible. Making decision-support information instantly accessible to the knowledge worker creates an agile enterprise trick: quick, competitive, and in control.
When carried out correctly, a data warehouse coupled with a set of decision-support applications provides for seamless integration of communication services globally. The raw material (data) needed for the development of an enterprise-wide data warehouse is already available in abundance in the deregulated telecommunications industry. Data warehousing has much potential within the telecommunications industry.
In conclusion, data marts have been introduced to try and make up for the failures made by centralised data warehouses. However, data mart technologies also have their disadvantages.
The data warehousing market holds explosive opportunity and Frost & Sullivan feels that the technology is penetrating the larger companies which can afford the initial investments, and which have realised the potential benefits that can be made through data warehousing.
Frost & Sullivan is an international marketing consulting company that monitors a comprehensive spectrum of high-tech markets, including the information technology industry for market Tends, market measurements and strategies. This ongoing research is utilised to complement a series of research publications such as the European Database Software Market (3562) to support industry participants with customised consulting needs.
For more information, see http://www.frost.com.