Techaisle's study focused on Business Intelligence Adoption and Trends among SMBs shows that currently 22 percent of SMBs use business intelligence and another 27 percent are planning in the next one year. Cloud based business intelligence followed by collaborative and mobile are the top business intelligence areas for SMBs. Social media analytics does not yet show a clear usage pattern.

Cloud business intelligence usage is expected to jump in the next one year as 47 percent of users plan to shift to cloud from spreadsheets, a jump of 59 percent from 2011. Supporting multiple locations and telecommuting employees along with low initial cost are prime drivers for using cloud business intelligence. However, barriers to adoption remain in the form of data security, privacy, data integration and customization. Study shows that ease of use, real time analytics, and integration across applications will accelerate adoption. SMBs prefer procuring a single consolidated BI platform, however, differences exist by employee sizes.

The objective of the study was to understand the current and planned usage of business intelligence, benefits expected, feature set required and application areas.

Mobile business intelligence is in its infancy, nevertheless, 18 percent of SMBs using business intelligence are planning to adopt in in 2012. SMBs are unsure on how best to utilize the application and its associated costs.

Big data analytics is not only for enterprises but at least 18 percent of mid-market businesses are seriously considering big data analytics.

SMBs are using various vendors for their business intelligence solutions. As per the study, the business intelligence vendor penetration within SMBs is fragmented with Microsoft as a leader, followed by Oracle, Cloud9 Analytics, Host Analytics, MicroStrategy, SAP Business Objects and others.