Birst Earns Top Ranking in Global BI Market Survey

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Jun 2, 2014) - Birst, the leader in Cloud BI, announced today that its enterprise-caliber Cloud BI platform earned the highest ranking as an Emerging Business Intelligence Vendor in the 2014 Wisdom of Crowds® Business Intelligence Market Study. Birst, surveyed in the annual study for the second year, outscored all other vendors in its category, and received a higher score than all of the major vendors in the Large Established Pure-Play BI, Business Intelligence Titans and High-Growth Business Intelligence Vendors categories. Scores were based on direct user feedback and covered quality and usefulness of product, value for price, whether a vendor is recommended, and other criteria.

The report highlights the increased importance of Cloud BI as a priority for organizations. The report also states that "better decision making" is the BI objective most strongly identified with across functions, industries and geographies.

Birst achieved the top-ranked vendor spot in the "Emerging Business Intelligence Vendors" segment, increasing performance in virtually all measures compared to the 2013 report. In addition, Birst achieved a perfect "recommended" score which was key given that the report also notes that in 2014, respondents are slightly less likely to recommend their BI software provider than in 2013 and that 2014 represents a 4.5 percent reduction in likely vendor recommendations compared to 2011. According to the report, while this may not reflect a decline in vendor loyalty among users, it may suggest respondents are having a greater experience and getting exposure to new and alternative BI providers. The "Emerging Business Intelligence Vendors" are described as vendors that are typically younger than the other categories and offer unique and often innovative business models, technologies, and/or services.

The data collection for this report remains impressive. This year, the respondent base grew by 8.5 percent over 2013 and in the three years of data collection since 2011, interest in the study in the form of completed surveys has more than doubled.

"It's no secret that organizations across all industries are seeing the impact, power and potential of business intelligence. Birst continues to raise the bar in the business intelligence market. Our focus on innovation and our dedication to customer success has positioned us as the undisputed leader in cloud business intelligence," said Birst CEO Jay Larson. "Birst worked hard to obtain a top ranking in this survey. It validates that we deliver superior software and that our customer satisfaction is the best in the industry. We're proud to receive such glowing feedback from the customers everyone in our company is dedicated to supporting."

"We congratulate Birst on their placement in this year's flagship BI Market study," said Howard Dresner, founder and chief research officer at Dresner Advisory Services. "Organizations have indicated ambitious plans for extending their user base in the coming time frames, with dashboards, end-user self service, data warehousing, and advanced visualization leading the list of technologies and initiatives strategic to business intelligence. While most technology priorities remained consistent with 2013, open source and cloud BI increased slightly as a strategic priority in 2014."

Conducted by Dresner Advisory Services, the global study compared 24 of the world's leading BI vendors on a five-point scale across 33 criteria. The results are based on feedback from 1,283 qualified participants with first-hand experience with vendor products and services. Vendor rankings are based on sales/acquisition experience, value for price paid, quality and usefulness of product, quality of technical support, quality and value of consulting, integrity, and whether the vendor is recommended. Now in its fifth year, the study is used by business people to better understand how their peers are leveraging and investing in BI and related technologies.

To learn more, join Howard Dresner as he dives into the results of the 2014 Wisdom of Crowds® Business Intelligence Market Study in a Birst webinar on June 12, 2014 entitled "Boost Your Analytics Acumen." Register for the webinar here. To better understand Birst's performance in the report and access your own copy, please visit http://www.birst.com/wisdom2014.

About Birst
Birst is the only enterprise-caliber Business Intelligence platform born in the cloud. Less costly and more agile than Legacy BI and more powerful than Data Discovery, Birst is engineered with an automated data warehouse and rich, visual analytics, to give meaning to data--all types and sizes. Coupled with the agility of the Cloud, Birst gives business teams the ability to solve real problems. Fast. Find out why Gartner named Birst a Challenger in its most recent BI Magic Quadrant and why thousands of businesses rely on Birst for their analytic needs. Learn to think fast at www.birst.com and join the conversation @birstbi.