BI Vendors Partnering for BI in the Cloud

June 17, 2010 BI Market, BI Solutions, Cloud BI No Comments
Four open-source and proprietary vendors have forged a new partnership resulting in a cloud-based BI stack.
  1. Jaspersoft - open-source BI
  2. Talend -  data-integration
  3. Vertica - analytics database
  4. RightScale - management software for cloud-based application deployments
Whilst the contractual relationship between the vendors may be tight, unfortunately the same cannot be said for customers. Customers need to form contractual agreements with each vendor. Each vendor will also be responsible for supporting their own technology. To ease the pain, the group has created a seamless sales that supports a ‘pay-as-you-go’ pricing model inherent in cloud computing.
Such an offering will not only attract smaller enterprises; departments in larger enterprises frustrated at the lengthy delay of BI deployment and the complex Capex business case sign off will find value in such a one-stop infrastructure to advance their use of data from spreadsheets and canned reports into an operational BI application. The stack will also provide an ideal ‘sandbox’ for enterprise IT teams wishing to experiment with BI analytics.
Click here to gain real insight into How Cloud Computing will open up opportunities in BI for both enterprises and IT vendors and consultant.

New Releases in The Logical Organization Management Insight Series

March 20, 2010 BI Program, BI Strategy, BI Theory, CPM, Cloud BI, Cloud Computing 1 Comment

I am really excited to announce the release of two new additions to the TLO Management Insight Series:

  • Leading With SPI
  • Getting to Cloud

Leading with SPI – Driving Productivity and Profit using Strategic Performance Improvement

Leading with SPI - Driving Productivity and Profit using Strategic Performance Improvement

Leading with SPI provides a detailed, step-by-step guide to driving better strategic definition and more effective and efficient strategic execution. Using the powers of business intelligence, the key decisions of the business are focused around those points where real improvement can be made. SPI transforms the outlook of business leaders from a backward facing measurement system using traditional lagging indicators, to a more future focused KPI based performance improvement capability that delivers more opportunities to improve and move ahead of competition.

SPI starts with deconstruction of measurable strategic objectives to help focus the business on what’s most important, and by following a simple process, identifies the questions that must be answered at each key decision point.

The KPI used to measure performance are grouped around these key decision points, ensuring that what must be done, gets measured. And, gets focused upon!

Find out more about Leading with SPI by clicking here.

Getting to Cloud – Discovering New Business Opportunities with Cloud Computing

Getting to Cloud - Discovering New Business Opportunities with Cloud Computing

Cloud is the missing power base that underpins data warehouses and advanced analytics. So many businesses are either prevented from implementing BI solutions or stall early into the project through the lack of processing power or clean data quality management. Cloud provides the opportunity to leverage the significant benefits of BI, without reliance on outdated, overloaded IT infrastructures.

Cloud computing is so much more than a power base for BI – with its foundation in virtualization technology, it is the platform that will transform the competitive base of business. No longer will small businesses be constrained in competing against their larger competitors through lack of IT resources. Cloud remedies that.

Cloud also impacts the IT reseller market – rather than disintermediation of resellers, Cloud offers an expanse of new service and product opportunities that were previously beyond the technical or financial scope.

Getting to Cloud looks at the questions both buyers and sellers need to be asking themselves right NOW. It provides detailed ROI case analysis and savings data for use in business cases…and so much more.

Find out more about Getting to Cloud by clicking here

How to Set Up BI in the Cloud

September 3, 2009 Cloud BI, Cloud Computing, Pentaho No Comments

I watch a lot of webinars and every now and then I come across one that really stands out. And one I really would like to recommend is:

A Guide to Building a Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence Solution in the Cloud

Recorded on July 9, 2009 by Open-source BI vendor Pentaho, Cloud DBMS vendor Vertica and BI Cloud systems integrator OpenBI, Ithe webinar provides a very insightful overview how any concerns around performance and security with Cloud have been overcome for use with BI applications. In particular, the webinar covers:

  • Cloud overview (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud)
  • Operational expense vs. capital expense project funding
  • Technology selection
  • Provisioning BI hardware and software in the Amazon EC2 with Vertica and Pentaho
  • How a BI demo was created and lessons learned using Pentaho and Vertica
  • New BI opportunities enabled by the economic advantages of cloud computing

A segment I found especially helpful was the configuration considerations when setting up BI in the Cloud. This included security, cost management, user access, ETL, performance etc.

View the Webinar [52mins] here