Amazon is readying a new service, code-named Space Needle, designed to help businesses better analyze their growing collections of data. The service — which will compete with IBM, Microsoft, SAP, Tibco and others in the lucrative business intelligence space — could help the Amazon Web Services cloud-computing division secure more customers by housing more of their data. Amazon is in a strong position for an add-on service; clients such as Airbnb, Netflix, Nike and Pfizer already store their proprietary data on AWS.

“It would also broaden the cloud-computing division’s target users, typically information-technology workers, to include nontechnical employees, such as business managers,” suggests The Wall Street Journal.

While there is a growing number of established companies and startups offering business intelligence software, many enterprises are reportedly not satisfied by the current offerings.

“This will be the new 800-pound gorilla in the market,” said Boris Evelson, an analyst at Forrester Research, who believes the potential for Amazon is significant since the data analytics market is so new.

According to Pringle & Co., the business intelligence market is expected to be worth $143 billion next year.

“Corporate data has proliferated as computers play a larger role in operations, more business is conducted online, and the cost of data storage has fallen,” notes WSJ. “The data explosion promises to illuminate business decisions, boosting efficiency and agility.”

However, connecting numerous databases with inconsistent formats has been challenging. “Tools like Space Needle can be only as good as the data fed into them, and the long-term question is how AWS will connect to data that isn’t stored in AWS systems,” WSJ reports.