Business Intelligence Market Overview

BI is transitioning from report factories to self-service analytics.

Market Evolution

Traditional BI (2000s): IT-controlled, slow, reliable
Self-Service (2010s): Tableau, Power BI democratization
Modern Stack (2020s): dbt, Looker, composable analytics
AI-Native (2024+): Natural language queries, auto-insights

Market Size & Players

• Market Size: ~$30B (2024)
• Growth: 10-12% CAGR

Key Trends

• Semantic layer becoming mandatory
• Metrics stores standardizing definitions
• Reverse ETL activating data in tools
• AI assistants lowering query barrier

BI Competitive Dynamics

The Visualization Race

Tableau's Position

• Gold standard for visualization
• Strong community, Tableau Public
• Acquired by Salesforce (integration focus)

Power BI's Strategy

• Bundled with M365
• Aggressive pricing
• Azure-native features

Looker's Approach

• LookML semantic layer
• Developer-friendly
• Google Cloud integration

The Modern Data Stack Effect

New architecture reshaping BI:

Sources → Fivetran → Snowflake → dbt → Looker/Tableau

This separates:

• Transformation (dbt)
• Semantic layer (Looker, dbt metrics)
• Visualization (any BI tool)

Switching Considerations

The hardest part isn't the tool—it's the semantic layer migration.