A wise man once said nothing stays the same forever. We don’t know in which context he had said it, but it’s very true in today’s scenario, especially because of technology.
Disruption is everywhere. Cloud computing first emerged in the 1950s with the development of microchips and mainframe computers. Users operated these computers through terminal computers for the efficient use of CPU resources. These were developed over the years and in the early 2000s, VPN brought with it a new shift and the dot-com boom. And over the years, pioneers like Amazon, Google and Microsoft propelled cloud computing further and by 2016, the cloud computing industry was already a $210 billion industry.
Cloud-Based BI: Here To Shape Businesses.
Today, cloud too is taking new shape. Cloud allows us to store huge amounts of data. But that’s only half the job. The other half is to take out that data and use it in the right place, at the right time. And that can be possible by Business Intelligence. BI is the partner that today’s businesses need. It enables organizations to take a close look at their business architecture with the help of technology and offers important insights.
Today, many organizations put in a lot of money and time purchasing advanced software, hiring the best IT support and setting up a proper environment for BI application. Yet, they are faced with issues of efficiency, maintenance and accuracy. That’s why it’s best if BI is coupled with the cloud.
Cloud-based BI: Easily Adapts To Changing Requirements.
Forrester defines business intelligence as a set of methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies that transform raw data into actionable insights to enable more effective strategic, tactical, and operational decision making. In other words, it’s the evolution from data amassing to drawing insights from it by fostering better practices and technologies.
Highly adaptable and comparatively inexpensive, cloud-based BI lets you easily scale up or down based on the user’s requirement. Additionally, it offers unmatched ease of use. An application that is running on the cloud can be accessed via their mobiles, laptops, desktops and more. All admin related queries are usually taken up by cloud service providers. Allowing you to focus more on your core areas of business. It also addresses one of the major concerns of any business: data security. Thanks to BI’s multi-tenant nature, only one instance of your software will run on a server and will serve multiple clients. And this minimizes any chances of data duplication.
Business intelligence, in today’s time, is at the crux of any major organization. Compatible as a standalone decision-support application or when embedded into operational systems of record, automation, and engagement, BI posses all the vital makings that are required to keep the company’s internal functions in motion. Analyzing raw data, data mining, analytical processing, querying and reporting – these are some of the many things that business intelligence lets an organization achieve. That’s almost all the essentials that are required for any company to grow and improve.
According to a report by Forrester in 2017, it is predicted that insights-driven businesses will have a take a significant share of the market – over $1.8 trillion – from their competitors that are still banking on data to make and enforce business decisions. It believes that while data is extremely important, making business decisions based on just that isn’t enough to take the right business call.
Today, in this competitive economy where businesses are required to take important decisions on a daily basis, BI promises great potential. Some of the leading corporations today identify BI as an important tool for articulating their business strategies. Due to this, BI has become widely popular compared to traditional on-premises software.
Author: Nishant Jain Co-Founder BizAcuity
