In the wake of economic slowdown, organizations are aiming to make the most of their existing resources—to make every input a viable source. In such a strategy, modern technologies such as Cloud Services and Business Intelligence (BI) are regarded to be prerequisite platforms. Such technologies not only prepare companies to become efficient but also make them ready to maintain a competitive stance. BI and cloud work in sync to form hypotheses and predictions to be prepared for market competition. Researchers believe that the future of BI will be very bright when it is used on existing cloud platforms; it may also exhibit computing advantages based on daily data accumulating of large volumes.
Cloud-based BI is different from traditional BI in the sense that it implements expensive and complicated software on-site; it is accessible anywhere on any device in a so-called software-as-a-service model. Cloud BI doesn’t require additional hardware or software nor a strict restriction on space. The system can also auto-select storage according to current computing needs – this elastic scaling and ever-ready availability are the perks that make cloud-based BI so powerful.
BI involves making better decisions through the use of people, data, processes, and related tools and methodologies. Recently, BI has come to rely on near real-time operational data of systems such as ERPs, CRMs, supply chains, and so on. Operational BI is often tied to performance management and business process management with natural undertones of maintaining data quality, consistency, and the monitoring of these two. BI prompts intelligent reports based on a market analysis which may also involve geography based investment decision for MNCs or buying behavior of consumers for producers.
The ability to operate on BI involves intensive data management and computationally expensive data analysis. With the help of the cloud, BI bypasses these hurdles without impacting the quality of the processes negatively. Instead, it improves efficiency, reduces error, and expenditure. The analytics performed on the cloud platform will affect BI in the following ways:
• Accelerating the adoption of BI services due to rising lucrative intents involved.
• Easier evaluation of the data and analytics through real-time analysis at lightning-fast speed.
• Increased short-term ad-hoc analysis through avoiding data marts spawning. The data mart can be created whenever needed, and after the job, it can be eliminated from a cloud cluster without causing redundancy.
• BI will also make the process very flexible through avoidance of long-term business commitments. The companies will be autonomous in catering to the needs of data usage.
• Consideration of probable growth through ongoing analysis of data staged on an architecture functionally efficient, elastic and platform such as cloud.
BI in the cloud also has some benefits that might be instrumental in transforming its future, especially in its broad adoption. These benefits include:
• Fast, easy and inexpensive deployment resulting from non-requirement of infrastructural setup.
• No extra expenditure on hardware and software setup, which will inevitably result in low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
• Higher reliability will be extended as cloud computing can be used at reliable and secure locations for data storage against the threat of accidental data loss.
• Multi-tenancy environments where the resources could be better exploited to their optimum usage will result in cost reduction and higher customer reach.
• Free automated software upgrades and maintenance would attract wise brains in adopting the cloud for BI.
• Flexibility and scalability of the cloud needed are not just smart but also economical. Reduction in a waste of cloud space will help save both energy and money.
• Cloud types such as SaaS allow the consumers to pay for only what is used; this would result in the elimination of waste and reduced costs.
• Specific cloud solutions come with personalized needs for data handling. From large numbers of simultaneous users to a minimal amount of users, the consumer will indulge in fast and easy scalability.
• Cloud computing allows easy cross-location data sharing and remote data access even when they are deployed outside a company’s firewall.
With such astounding benefits, it seems convincing to agree with the researchers who proclaim a rapid growth of cloud-based business intelligence in the near future. As the world is progressing and advancing towards the betterment of the technology, it wouldn’t be entirely wrong to predict the improvement of current benefits of cloud-based BI. Cloud-based BI enhances efficiency and productivity of business intelligence. In the future, BI will be further assisted by web 3.0 technology, making its future even brighter.
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