Press Release: The Time Has Come for the Cloud
PRESS RELEASE – WÜRZBURG, November 11th, 2020
The analyst firm BARC publishes the Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor 2021 at this year’s Big Data & AI World Frankfurt online conference. 2,259 users were surveyed for the study, providing a comprehensive overview of the current trends in the global market for data management, BI and analytics. For the fourth year in a row, master data and data quality management is voted the number one trend. This year’s development towards the digital workplace has propelled the “Cloud” trend to its highest ranking to date. The full report is available as a free download.
Key findings
- #1: “Cloud BI is now getting the attention it deserves,” says Dr. Carsten Bange, CEO of BARC. “Increased discussion about home offices and the digital workplace in society and politics is creating a positive climate and experience for the use of cloud applications. The main arguments in favor of BI solutions in the cloud are today’s increased requirements for flexibility and speed. New data and reports can be made available quickly to changing user groups.”
- #2: Like last year, master data and data quality management, data discovery, data-driven corporate culture, data governance and self-service analytics are voted as the top five trends.
- #3: “Attention is the new oil”: Alerting takes off as a new trend.
The new edition of the Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor 2021 is available for free, © BARC
Cloud on the rise
“Cloud BI is not a new trend, but this year we see it is finally reaching end users. We think this is at least partly due to the current coronavirus crisis,” says BARC founder and CEO Dr. Carsten Bange, explaining the rise of the cloud from 18th place last year to 14th place.
“Homeworking is currently the subject of much discussion in politics and society. The cloud plays a central role here as it allows flexible access to applications and data from any location. Furthermore, cloud applications can often be set up and implemented more quickly, which meets the rapidly growing need for speed and flexibility. More flexible billing models are also better suited to the uncertainty and unpredictability of these dynamic times. Cloud BI is now getting the attention it deserves.”
No major shifts despite coronavirus crisis
Despite the global changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the leading trends remain unchanged. Like last year, master data and data quality management, data discovery, data-driven corporate culture, data governance and self-service analytics are voted as the top five trends.
The comparison of rankings in the 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 editions,
n=2772/2770/2679/2865/2259, © BARC
“Business intelligence systems have played a central role in enabling decision-makers to quickly bring transparency to where and how the pandemic is affecting their business,” says Dr. Carsten Bange. “In addition, the rapid adaptation of scenarios and forecasts has been required as well as the creation of new reports and dashboards with new content. The five strongest trends are all vital to enabling companies to make data-driven decisions. This became more important in 2020 than ever before.”
Alerting – a new trend takes off
Among the newly added trends for 2021, respondents rated alerting as one of their top ten topics despite the tendency for new trends not to perform well in their first year in the Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor.
Dr. Carsten Bange explains this development: “Attention is the new oil: In a BI system, a great deal of data is presented in various reports and dashboards and users are sometimes overloaded with it. Our survey respondents obviously find it helpful for the system to actively point out what is important to users or what they should derive an action from. Software vendors are also making a lot of progress in this area.”
The trends in the BARC Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor 2021, n=2,259, © BARC
About the Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor 2021
With 2,259 participants, BARC’s Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor 2021 is the largest global trend survey on analytics, business intelligence and data management. It offers a detailed evaluation and weighting of 20 individual trends by region, industry and self-assessment of the participating companies (“Best-in-Class” vs. “Laggards”). The complete study is available free of charge thanks to sponsorship by Alteryx, Cubeware, Information Builders, MicroStrategy and TARGIT.
Useful links
– Further information about the Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor 2021
– Download the full report
– Infographic
About BARC
BARC (Business Application Research Center) is one of Europe’s leading analyst firms for business software, focusing on the areas of data, business intelligence (BI) and analytics, enterprise content management (ECM) and customer relationship management (CRM). The company was founded in 1999 as a spin-off of the Chair of Business Administration and Information Systems at the Julius-Maximilians-University in Würzburg. Today, BARC combines empirical and theoretical research, technical expertise and practical experience, including a constant exchange with all market participants.
Contact
For further information, please contact:
Regina Schmidt
Communications Manager
Tel: +49 (0) 931 880651-47
Mobile: + 49 (0) 1520 431 82 39
Email: rschmidt@barc.de
