SAP AG has announced that IDC has found it to be the leader in the worldwide business intelligence (BI) tools market based on software license and maintenance revenue (including subscription revenue). IDC also reported that SAP has grown faster than the worldwide market for financial performance and strategy management (FPSM) applications for the fifth consecutive year.

The two IDC analyses – “Worldwide Business Intelligence Tools 2010 Vendor Shares”(1) and “Worldwide Financial Performance and Strategy Management Applications 2010 Vendor Shares”(2) – found that SAP leads the worldwide BI market with revenues of $1,866.4 million and a 21 percent market share, while revenue for FPSM was $629 million constituting a 24.9 percent market share. From 2009 to 2010 SAP outperformed the worldwide market growth in each category: for BI tools SAP grew by 19.9 percent compared to the total market growth of 11.4 percent, and for FPSM applications it grew by 17.5 percent compared to the total market growth of 9.2 percent.

“Our momentum continues to grow as we focus heavily on delivering customer success by executing on our business analytics roadmap, bringing to market new and innovative releases of our BI, EIM, EPM and GRC solutions,” said Steve Lucas, general manager, Business Analytics, SAP. BI and FPSM solutions are part of IDC’s taxonomy for the overall business analytics market.

As SAP is taking the Business Intelligence (BI) market by storm with this latest survey, SAP general manager, Business Analytics, Steve Lucas explains that the company’s momentum will continue to grow as it focuses “heavily on delivering customer success by executing on our business analytics roadmap, bringing to market new and innovative releases of our BI, EIM, EPM and GRC solutions.”

In addition to this, SAP will soon roll out Crystal Server 2011 and Business Objects Edge 4.0, a pair of new BI (business intelligence) products aimed at small and medium-sized companies, the company announced recently.

Crystal Server 2011 was formerly named Crystal Reports Server. The change was made because SAP is “really positioning [it] as an entry-level BI platform,” and not just something for reports, said Jayne Landry, vice president of solution management, business analytics and technology.

The products are scheduled to be generally available in the first few weeks of July, aligned with the release of Business Objects 4.0, the enterprise-level version of SAP’s analytics products. This is a change from the past, when Edge’s release would come six to eight weeks after the high-end version, Landry said.

Crystal Server 2011 has new features such as the Explorer tool for “drilling down” into data sets as well as an information design tool. It’s limited to a single server and 100 named users, according to an SAP document. The idea is that customers who outgrow products like Crystal Server 2011 can step up to one with more features.

Edge 4.0 takes the Crystal Server feature set and adds others, such as Web Intelligence, mobile BI and integrations to applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite. There is also an EDGE edition that adds data-integration tooling and a third that bundles data management software.

All Edge versions are also limited to a single server. For multi-server support, unlimited users and other features, customers would upgrade to Business Objects 4.0. “No matter where a customer starts, their investment is protected,” Landry said. For one, SAP has created a common user experience across the various products, which could save time and money on training.