In 2019, worldwide spending on business intelligence (BI) and analytics software increased 7.5%. That's higher than not only the global GDP but also overall IT spending. But what this number masks is that spending on public cloud BI and analytics grew 40% while the on-premises portion was flat. What is behind this ongoing growth in spending? Hasn't access to information and reporting been a priority for most enterprises for decades? What has changed?

In the summer of 2019, when IDC asked 100 CEOs about the importance of various strategic areas to their organization over the next five years, 80% of respondents replied that using data in advanced decisioning to effect performance is critical. It's not that enterprises want more data; they want everyone in their company to be able to make better data-driven decisions, but they face several challenges, such as:

• Silos of data, technology, and staff
• Inability to synthesize data into relevant and actionable information
• Substandard practices and tools for retention and dissemination of the knowledge that is produced as part of the data analysis
• Inability to scale insights across the enterprise to all employees (and machines)