Cloud BI

Cloud , cloud every where .. Don't you think so ? In case not , you will see it soon . Atleast I am in clouds now a days :). 

Day before yesterday I was listening to Marc Benioff ( CEO of Sales force ) key note address during Dream Force 2011 and panel discussion with Eric Schmidt( Executive Chairman of Google). I was amazed to feel their energy ,passion and future vision. No doubt , the Cloud is the turning point of IT industry , the last one we had during Mainframes to client server transition. As things are evolving so there would be mixed responses during this phase. Some will say , this is a bubble and it will burst soon. Who cares , though I am in clouds , but i can see very far :). Post that I listened to some old keynotes of Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg , Larry Ellison and concluded that all are pointing in one direction.

So..I am very excited to be part of this transition and see how quick things will be adopted. They say , Every disaster has an opportunity hidden. To relate this I would say the current economic situations are acting as catalyst to strongly push cloud market. Also I am equally excited to see what changes this transition will bring to BI industry, how BI will fit in, how the future BI architecture look like?? 

There are numerous advantages Cloud offers, the major are Time to market and economic ( initial cost as well as Total cost of ownership). The other ones are better performance ( subject to architecture) , scalability , almost no upgrades overheads and so on..

Now its lot about the trend and benefits, Its time to have some basic understanding of Cloud computing? Wikipedia definition goes like this:

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network (typically the Internet).

In simple words its just moving computational power from on premise to cloud in Internet and accessing this computing power by web browser/web services etc.  Vendors are offering three kind of flavors

1. SaaS : Software as a service . e.g. Sales Force
2. PaaS : Platform as a service. e.g. Microstrategy cloud
3. IaaS : Infrastructure as a service. e.g. Amazon EC2

Talking about BI in cloud , I feel most of the would fall in PaaS(Platform as a service) where vendors provides world class hardware and Software strictly in line with BI requirements, be it DWH appliance, Data integration tools, Reporting layer etc. Also Companies can immediately start developing /deploying on these world class environment offering wealth of tools. E.g. Microstrategy Cloud offers Microstrategy suite on reporting layer, Netezza as DWH appliance and Informatica for Data Integration.

IaaS ( generic cloud ) is also be used by some of organizations , however this might throw additional tasks like platform setting up, tuning etc to inhouse team. Amazon EC2 , database.com , Azure are leading examples in this category.

We can also see some companies opting for third party BI applications on SaaS. e.g. Sales force appexchange offers thousands of applications and hundreds of consulting partners.

Effectively we can see BI foot print would be there on all three flavours.  
 
Some Points to take care

1. Proof of concept is highly recommended prior to overall change. This will help to set expectations, benchmark etc.Lot many vendors offer free trial, FYI.
2. Please check the data policy of your organization as some of the organization would not like to have the data stored outside the company firewall.
3. Performance can take a hit , If cloud architecture involves accessing data from on premise. 
4. Ensure adequate Security measures for data access and storage in multi tenancy environment as well as cloud accessing on premise data. Do thorough due diligence with while selecting a vendor and during POC phase.

So Cloud is a way to go .. Guys gear up.. Happy clouding:)..

regards, Ajay