Smart companies are trying to pursue every available opportunity to maximize
their performance and minimize costs. That's why, business intelligence tools are used to analyze data, identify trends, and support business decisions, etc.
Beside traditional BI solutions, one of a new growing trends is definitely Cloud BI. Cloud BI solutions are also known as Software-as-a-Service or On-demand solutions. They offer a timely and cost-effective resource for businesses of all sizes, in order to maximize their business potential while minimizing costs.
While on one side we have the evolution of cloud computing as a quick, cost effective and
efficient platform, on the other side we have business intelligence technology which helps to companies to improve the quality and speed of business decisions. With the unification of these two, companies have got a new business intelligence solutions - Cloud BI solutions.
To make the most of Cloud BI, companies should look for a complete solutions which are easy to use, quick to deploy, scalable as data and user requirements grow.
To find the best solution, each company should consider their own unique needs. Take a look at our previous post - Selecting the right business intelligence product, for more info on this topic. So, once when you determine your needs, the best match can be found among available Cloud BI vendors.
The first thing you should have in mind about Cloud BI is that instead of purchasing,
integrating, and maintaining BI software on your own, you can pay for analytics capabilities as a monthly or annual service. Generally, Cloud BI is more cost effective and rapidly implemented than traditional business intelligence solutions.
In fact, Cloud BI is the most simple and the most cost-effective way for a company to get all the components needed for data access and integration, analytics, reporting, dashboards, etc. All of this you can have in a hosted environment, with pay-as-you-go economics. They provide flexible and powerful business insight, and they are easier to use, cheaper and faster.
With traditional business intelligence solutions, companies need one year to year and a half, or even longer, to deploy. There's a big advantage of Cloud BI solutions, because they are quick to deploy, and relatively simple to change. The main reason for this advantage is that with Cloud BI solutions, there is no additional hardware to install and implement, no additional servers or services, etc.
Also, ongoing maintenance and customization is easier and faster. Big plus is also that companies don't have to worry about software updates, architecture or security problems. All this is maintained by the Cloud BI vendor and delivered to companies automatically.
These were just a few advantages of Cloud BI solutions. In one of our next blog posts, we will write more about the most important advantages and features of Cloud BI solutions.