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On demand business intelligence for enterprise?
What are the benefits of using an on demand business intelligence application (as opposed to an on premise software) for an Enterprise company? I'm doing some research and am wondering if on demand BI applications are as popular in the Enterprise as they are for SMB - MidMarket companies. Do you think that on-premise BI applications are still the smarter choice for an Enterprise organization?
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5 Answers
Hi Dan,
I work for Birst, an on-demand BI company, so I can give you some perspective here. I'm not a salesperson, so don't worry, I won't be calling you 15 times.
We have a number of enterprise customers who have multiple thousands of users, as well as departments of enterprises with just tens or hundreds of users.
In general, they choose on-demand BI because:
1. It's easier and faster to get started. You don't have to buy hardware and software, and if you choose Birst you get a fully integrated, comprehensive solution, so you don't have to integrate disparate products together to get what you want.
2. It's more affordable. Instead of a huge upfront capital expense, you just pay by the month for what you need. The TCO is typically 1/3rd that of on-premise traditional solutions. So enterprises can finally give BI to departments and groups that couldn't afford it before, such as sales, marketing, ops, and HR.
3. It's easier to use. Instead of only a handful of people knowing how to use the system and getting swamped with requests, you can roll it out to lots of business users and they can answer their questions *themselves*. That lets IT focus on higher priority projects and ensures that business folks get their questions answered quickly.
4. It's compatible with what you've got already. Most enterprises have some form of BI in-house already. However, that solution is probably too expensive and complex to extend to that next desired BI project. On-demand BI is fast and affordable, as well as compatible with what you've got now, so you can add it to your portfolio of BI solutions without worrying.
Boris Evelson at Forrester recently came out with a report on SaaS BI, Aberdeen is releasing one in August, and Gartner also has one in the works.
If you want to know more, you can check out Birst at www.birst.com, or you can also check out our "BI 101" section of the site, which covers SaaS BI vs. traditional BI. http://www.birst.com/bi101/index.shtml
Good luck with your research.
Hello Dan,
I like your research topic and you are asking a few questions.
I want to give you my view but let me turn them around a bit:
1. The smarter choice?
- This depends on your Enterprise architecture for the mid/longterm not only your IT architecture.
- OnDemand applications can integrate very good with Enterprise DWHs so it would be a good addition(!).
Q:Is the company going to change departments and processes to work more efficiently?
2. Popularity?
- I think Yes and No as always, depends per department and type of information shared (real-time/last bizday/periodically)
- This is a (generation) change within the whole IT-community I would say.
3. Benefits?
- It is not a versus between application platforms, they should have similar business functionalities but other discussions between OnDemand and OnPremise as a whole. Infra structure, Private/Public cloud, Security, Country regulations etc.
- Some benefits are quick ROI, licensing structure, infra costs (back up etc.) and so on...
In essence we do not have to talk about replacement, yet.
I have delivered it being a good addition to the current On-Premise architecture. On-Demand is something of NOW whereas On-Premise is from BEFORE.
Chrs.,
Ptrick Sandriman
Dan,
I think it could be a smart choice, especially in the long run.
The delivery and relationship model of an on-demand solution brings with it a number of advantages:
* removes limitations of what you can achieve using your in house IT hardware and support. All you need to do is work out what you want your software to do and how much you want to pay for it, then find the product that fits best
* Most on demand products are lightweight and designed to complement the investment in data storage and manipulation that you already have.
* on demand payment structures mean that you have no CapEx and only pay for the amount you use the product. If half your users find they they aren't deriving any value from the software, they can easily cancel their subscriptions at the end of the month, halving the cost
* Access and sharing were the original drivers of this cloud computing model so applications make it easy to get useful visualizations to the right people quickly by inviting people to your dashboard's URL or embedding it in a website or blog
* Finally, as there is no software to install, there is no daily maintenance or routine tasks to be done, so nothing to require extra IT hands or expertise. This frees IT professionals to concentrate on strategic IT and growing your business
I am too more and more leaning toward on-demand BI solutions as better.
What BI world have to become is user-centric, not data centric.
We have to ask what we want to see/analyse, and not what some tool will allow us to.
I think that either way is good depending on what you are gathering intelligence ON. In-house may be perfect solution. I've used several vendors. But sometimes legacy stuff gets in the way and you have to cut through the red tape. So I recommend pushing some of the operational BI projects to the cloud. Then groups inside an organization can get what they want -- faster.
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