Business Performance Solutions: The Competition Heats Up

Adoption of applications for planning, measuring, and reporting business performance is growing rapidly as companies focus on aligning their growth and operating strategies with individual performance measures and compliance requirements. We project that the business performance solutions (BPS) market will grow by 11% through 2010, with faster growth in measurement tools. This applications market has recently been dominated by business intelligence (BI) vendors, while the major enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors have struggled to gain traction among their own core installed bases. The growth opportunity in this market is not only driven by metrics-based management requirements but also by the aging and fragmented state of existing applications, both packaged and homegrown. Recognizing an opportunity, Microsoft will enter this market in 2007, potentially disrupting the competitive dynamics and accelerating growth.