Info Tech Associates

Cloud based Business Intelligence (BI) is widespread today and is being used by many organizations globally. It is a revolutionary concept of delivering business intelligence capabilities “as service” using cloud based architecture that comes at a lower cost yet faster deployment & flexibility. Software as a Service (SaaS) BI is also being used by many small and medium sized enterprises who seek to speed up their businesses with BI and analytics tools.According to a recent 2012 Wisdom of Crowds Cloud Business Intelligence Market Study of 859 respondents, there is a current strong investment in cloud based BI and growing interest in tapping into the cloud’s benefits; while a Gartner survey throws the fact that almost one-third of the BI platform users surveyed (27 percent, to be exact) are using or planning to use the cloud / SaaS model to expand their business intelligence capabilities in the next 12 months. These statistics strongly suggest that cloud based BI implementation is on an upswing among organizations.

On the other hand, past few years has seen not as much of BI adoption in the public cloud when compared to other applications. Business managers in some organizations fail to see the value of cloud. But this might not always be the reason behind delay in adopting cloud BI. Simply put, it might even be issues related to data integration, visualization and security in cloud BI as these are some considerations frequently cited when moving on cloud. While the market is still confused about the Cloud and SaaS offerings, understanding why businesses adopt cloud for BI might help make wise decisions.

According to a recent research by Gartner, there are three major drivers for cloud BI adoption among organizations which are as follows:Time SavingCloud based BI is deployed faster and provides insights and value in lucrative ways. It comes much adaptable for those enterprises whose IT expenditure runs on inadequate budget or higher workload.Cost ConcernsCompanies that seek Business Intelligence to save long-term operational expenses must go with cloud BI. These solutions might not be cheaper when compared to on-premise non-cloud models and might need huge capital investments; however on a long term, they help organizations in reducing operational costs, IT support expenses and much more.

Expertise BackingIf there is any lack of IT expertise in business that needs assistance in managing BI and analytic systems, companies may choose third-party BI apps on cloud that come along with cloud and tech-savvy professionals who can help deal with skill shortage issues.Many small organizations in the current scenario perform their work on cloud and develop their business sooner, which consecutively becomes a huge threat to larger organizations. With major advantages that cloud BI has to offer, we can see that many companies will implement cloud BI strategies to make comprehensive analysis. Businesses already using cloud BI must come forward and share their experience along with upbeat and negative feedback naming process efficiency, effectiveness and advantages gained compared to competitors and other benefits.