Cloud BI – Reloading Business Intelligence Applications

Cloud becomes a synonym for smart storage today. It is huge, on-demand, quick and the most practical storage today. It becomes the most cost-effective infrastructure option today. And when coupled with Business Intelligence, it makes data accessible in the most prudent fashion than ever thought of. The perfect couple at that, while Cloud provides agile storage, Business Intelligence sets about to provide the most relevant and precise information to the people in the organizational hierarchy. Modern Business Intelligence concepts also provide self-catering options like Self Service BI to put complete power in the hands of the people the information is intended for. And what’s more, Clouds are device-independent and the information is available on all the varieties of devices or browsers that anyone can think of.

All in all, Cloud BI deploys a storage facility with reduced lead times and better and relevant results for the intended users.

A Thumbs Up For Cloud Computing For Business Intelligence Advantages

• Ease Of Use

Business Intelligence applications are known to reduce dependency on IT personnel for any organization, making the end-users independent. Cloud technologies, on the other hand, have smooth setups and operational requirements, making the overall Cloud BI combination easy to use by all.

• Faster Deployment Speed

Cloud Applications minimize infrastructural requirements, especially all sorts of hardware and even software. As the organization is not burdened with planning and investing in new infrastructure, deployment cycles become faster with improved cost-effectiveness.

• Flexible And Scalable

Since Clouds are the infrastructure on-demand, they can be scaled up or down as and when required, with almost no planning at all. The number of users accessing Business Intelligence through Cloud infrastructure can be varied easily in accordance with the needs of the organization.

• Accessible

Since Cloud BI solutions come in various flavors, starting from the traditional browser-based or the newer mobile technologies based apps. Both the app-driven and the browser-based interfaces are synchronized harmoniously to find their base on the Cloud and run through the BI logic implemented.

Cloud BI systems are accessible from anywhere through any device, making them very practical and easy to use.

• Improved RoI

Faster implementation and reduced costs assure improved RoI for Cloud BI systems. In addition to the initial expenses, even the maintenance costs for both hardware and software are drastically reduced, decreasing the overall budget as well.

Top Cloud BI Solutions Today

The most noteworthy solutions offered today for strategizing Business Intelligence over Cloud are complete Cloud-based suites to the basic data visualization techniques.

bime

• Mixed Data Sources
• Advanced Visualizations
• Interactive and self-explanatory Dashboards
• Useful calculations
• Big Data
• Social Media

IBM Cognos

Deploys a niche Education Cloud infrastructure for typical situations like timely help and intervention for students predicted to require help and support.

• Meaningful Reporting
• Visualization BI
• Predictive Analytics

Birst

The winner for Wisdom of Crowds Cloud BI Market survey makes Birst grab one of the top positions in Cloud BI sector. Using an appliance installed behind the corporate firewall, it delivers business analytics in the Cloud.

• Interactive Dashboards
• ad-hoc analysis
• Visualization techniques
• Report Writing tools
• Self Service BI

Indicee

A Business Intelligence solution with embeddable reporting solutions for almost any business scenario

• Business APIs
• Exhaustive reporting tools
• Creation of Business Models
• Insightful Reports & Dashboards
• Multiple data types
• Interfacing with diverse business systems

GoodData

• A cloud-based Analytics tool for various popular applications
• Offers connections for various data sources
• Good Data Service for Analytics
• Offers a BI stack in the cloud
• Practical subscription-based data services
• Interfaces to third-party enrichment data, public data, and big data sources
• Enables companies to mashup their own data blends

Pivot Link

Offers consumer marketing optimization applications for the retail sector offering insights into consumer behavior, customer segment analysis, and marketing effectiveness analysis.

• Uses in-memory analytics for Big Data Analysis
• On-demand analytics solutions

Microsoft Power BI

Power BI from Microsoft is a robust cloud-based suite for data access, management, and analysis tools is now separate from Office 365 home and is a standalone Cloud BI service.

• Cost-effective
• Azure Data Market & Bing Maps as public data sources
• Active Directory-based data access capabilities
• Power BI Designer to create Charts, graphs, dashboards, and other visualizations

Microstrategy Cloud

It is an on-premises software delivered as a managed service with a parallel, relational in-memory engine through Cloud which powers giant customers including Facebook, MetLife, Netflix, and Wells Fargo.

• It offers multiple services like
• Infrastructure
• Deployment
• User training

Tableau Public

It offers facilities for online data visualizations for the desktop and the enterprise server.

Data Visualizations using charts, graphs and more

Embedded views for blogs and on public sites.

TIBCO Spotfire Cloud

It is a Personal or Workgroup for data science software in the cloud.

Imports and visualizes a variety of file sources like common spreadsheet flat files and data files

Recommendation feature to suggest best-fit visualizations for multiple data types

In a Nutshell

The mighty combo that it is, Cloud Computing and Business Intelligence win over many because of its simplicity rather than anything else. Like many other applied software-driven technologies, it does not overwhelm the end-users but instead empowers them to do more.

The coherence of Cloud BI makes it easy for small and mid-sized operations to make it a part of their information technology strategy. Cloud migration is projected as the next big thing tomorrow. The winners for this are faster deployment, ease of use and of course the reduced budgets. All this comes without any adjustments or compromises, and Cloud BI offers the same or even more and better features as the existing Business Intelligence implementations.

Real-time access to business-critical data remains complete.