Sign up for our free weekly e-newsletter

These figures don't include IBM's plans to buy Netezza Corp. for $1.7 billion in cash, which the company announced yesterday. Netezza offers a combination hardware/software appliance for analyzing huge volumes of data that's used by clients such as NYSE Euronext and Sherwin Williams.

Other big deals in recent years include Oracle's acquisition of Hyperion, SAP's purchase of Business Objects and IBM's previous deal for SPSS.

BI and analytics are front-of-mind for many marketing leaders as they attempt to use these tools to help them glean fresh insights into customer behavior, attitudes and preferences. In turn, decision-makers can use this information to tailor products and services for individual customers or segmented customer groups to help differentiate their companies.

Everyone's trying to get a leg-up on their competitors in terms of how they use and act upon customer information. That's a big reason why big technology companies have been so aggressive in this space.

For marketing leaders, there are both pros and cons to the rapidly consolidating analytics market. They can choose to partner with a single technology company for all of their BI and analytics needs, including predictive analytics tools, data warehouses and even vertical industry-specific BI tools in some cases. One-stop shopping can also help decision-makers to minimize or eliminate integration issues between different software systems.

But as smaller players in the analytics field continue to get swept up, this also reduces the number of options available for marketing leaders to choose from.

In the end, the best advice I often hear from marketing leaders and CIOs in choosing a BI or analytics provider is to partner with a company that has a vision and an approach which maps with your company's goals.