"This will be particularly attractive for small and medium sized businesses as standard BI functionality applications suddenly become available at a reasonable price." Despite the increasing presence of the "mega vendors," Gartner believes traditional pure-play vendors will continue to hold the majority of the market during the next few years.

However, increasing competition means they need to communicate their value-added services more clearly and they need to commit more resources in terms of time, money and focus to cut through the noise created by the "mega vendors."

If not, Gartner said they face the risk of the competition moving into other markets, such as performance management, as mega vendors look to expand their offerings. It is an opportunity for enterprises to take advantage of the highly competitive environment to negotiate contracts and buy basic BI functionality at lower prices.

But Gartner stressed the need to prepare for changes in technology and products. More importantly, in order to use BI to drive business transformation Gartner recommends changing the way the information architecture and application portfolio are implemented and managed.

This includes changing the way BI is integrated into business processes and to establish a BI competence center which includes the formation of a steering committee.