Business Intelligence and Analytics In The Cloud
Posted by Joe Maume on Mon, Jul 23, 2012 @ 09:28 AM
I read an interesting article today Fastest-Growing Category of Cloud Computing: Business Intelligence and Analytics. Here is some of what was said
"To be sure, we’re still only in the early stages cloud-based BI and analytics. A new survey report from Saugatuck Technology concludes that, as of year-end 2011, only about 13% of enterprises worldwide – including all industries and all sizes of enterprises – indicated that they had cloud-based BI/advanced analytics solutions in place and in use. 
But this is about to change. Saugatuck’s survey also shows that cloud-based BI and analytics will be among the fastest-growing cloud-based business management solution types through the next two years. Cloud-based BI and analytics will see an 84% compound annual growth rate over this period. This is based on a survey sample of 200 user enterprise IT and business leaders, along with input from about 30 vendors.
BI and analytics — whether on-premises or in the cloud — has long been the hottest area of software. Even when the economy and IT spending are down, companies still keep spending on BI, because it helps provide data-driven clarity and some predictability in market trends, and therefore quickly pays for itself.
“Inevitably, cloud is opening up business intelligence and analytics to more users — non-analysts — within organizations”. There already is a drive to make BI more ubiquitous, and the cloud will accelerate this move toward simplified access.
Not only do cloud-based BI solutions have advantages over on-premises BI for the usual reasons (rapid deployment, low upfront cost; quick and cheap scalability for processing, storage, operations and accessibility), but there are advantages specific to BI applications
For example, cloud-based BI enables the instant propagation of updates and changes, “of particular importance due to changes in data sources, and need to include new types of analysis,” but it also more cost-effectively supports a wider variety of initiatives, including one-time analyses, experimentation, trial deployments, broadening of the usage base, and agile development/deployment.” Cloud also offers a way to better share data with business partners and the supply chain".
Cloud computing is the ideal way for small and medium sized businesses to get the technology that previouly was only available to large multi-national companies. To learn more about how cloud computing can help small and medium sized businesses read our blog post 