Cloud Computing: Gartner Tracks Rapid Migration to SaaS-based BI, but Security and Bandwidth Issues Linger

Increasingly Business Intelligence (BI) projects are being deployed into the cloud.  A report from Gartner found that 17 percent of companies have already moved all their BI projects to the cloud and nearly one-third of organizations are planning or are in the beginning stages of using BI in the cloud.

James Richardson, research director at Gartner, said “Business users are often frustrated by the deployment cycles, costs, complicated upgrade processes and IT infrastructures demanded by on-premises BI solutions.  SaaS- and cloud-based BI is perceived as offering a quicker, potentially lower-cost and easier-to-deploy alternative, though this has yet to be proven. It’s evident that, despite growing interest, the market is confused about what cloud/SaaS BI and analytics are and what they can deliver.”

The Gartner report identifies three trends which are beyond the rapid move of BI to the cloud.  These include:

• Time to value:   The cloud is able to better meet business demands by enabling deployments that are significantly faster and more more flexible than what is possible with traditional on-premise computing.
• Cost concerns:  The SaaS pricing model for cloud-based BI services is attractive to many organizations.  The model allows either pay-as-you-go or subscription services which can typically be expensed rather than capitalized.  The cost benefits are particularly clear relative to cash flow and reduction of IT support costs.
• Lack of available expertise:  SaaS Bi offerings often provide packages solutions which enable organizations to get the benefits of powerful BI capabilities without have in-house analytic experts build custom solutions.

Richardson warns that “If their operational business applications are in the cloud, organizations should consider pursuing cloud BI/analytics for those domains. However, they must assess risks on an ongoing basis and ensure their chosen cloud provider has appropriate business skills to provide a viable outcome.  They must also ensure their BI strategy outlines how to ensure that data flows to and from these solutions in order not to become yet more silos of analysis.”

Ian Bertram, managing vice president at Gartner, added that “from a feature and functionality perspective, there is no real benefit with cloud BI. And from a total cost of ownership perspective, it costs just as much if not more than on-premise BI.”  The cloud brings with it additional worries about security and the costs and potential delays resulting from transferring large amounts of data to and from the cloud.

But Bertram added that the cloud has the potential to actually break down silos by making data more readily accessible.  Bertram said that “There is greater efficiency to be gained by storing the data in a single location and providing the capabilities for all involved organizations to slice and dice from that one location–that is the cloud–than it is to continue to replicate the data, which will only introduce complexity and poor data quality into business processes.”