MANILA, Philippines -- Small- and medium-sized businesses are starting to adopt business intelligence software, according to a report by research analyst IDC.

According to an IDC research, adoption of business intelligence tools among SMBs increased nearly 40 percent last year. The market was valued at more than $188 million in the first six months of 2007, with SMBs contributing almost one-fourth to the total spending.

Business intelligence, which involves using tools like analytics to crunch voluminous corporate data, was initially adopted by enterprise companies. But increasing competition and customer requirements are driving even smaller end-users toward such software.

SMBs are typically described as companies or organizations with 500 or less employees.

“Many of these companies have maturing IT infrastructure, steady levels of applications deployment, and increasing business requirements that render ad hoc analysis through other means, such as using only spreadsheets, slow and increasingly unreliable for decision making purposes,” said Sharon Tan, senior analyst for software applications at IDC Asia Pacific.

Also making business intelligence (often referred to as BI) is consolidation among players in the software industry. IBM and Oracle, for example, have announced multi-million dollar acquisitions of software companies.

IDC expects ongoing consolidation to favor end-users as major software players increasingly bundle BI into their products, which then drives down costs as adoption increases.

IDC also forecasted the BI market in Asia Pacific to reach $600 million in total spending by 2011.