According to a recently released market research study from Palo Alto Management Group Inc., Mountain View, CA, the market for data warehousing/decision support will grow at more than 50 percent a year to $113 billion by year 2002.
In 1997, a PAMG study found that the data warehousing market was about $15 billion worldwide
A principal driving force in this growth is that data warehouses will evolve to become the hub technology for vast corporate information distribution systems, said Michael P. Burwen, the study's director.
“Instead of having a relatively few so-called knowledge-workers accessing these warehouses, companies will be encouraging their employees, customers and suppliers to use the warehouse as a basic information resource as will government agencies wishing to inform millions of constituents,” he said.
The study user survey also found that the average size of a data warehouse today is 272 GigaBytes, and that the size of the warehouse is expected to increase by an average factor of 24 in three years — meaning the average warehouse would contain 6.5 TeraBytes. In addition, the survey found that, although the average number of users is currently around 2,200 people, in three years that figure would grow by a factor of 42 to nearly 100,000.
