SaaS... Software as a Service. The moment we say this, the name that strikes everyone's mind is Salesforce.com. It has revolutionized the way solutions delivered to customer. It provides the necessary hardware and support of hardware. All a customer needs to do is pay for the volume of resources used. This will take the responsibility of maintaining the hardware and human resources for maintaining it and instead the customer can concentrate on his core business process. The same rational has fuelled outsourcing as well. Salesforce.com's services are mainly related to the field of CRM.
Of late importance and potential of BI is recognized increasingly. We see BI is used in many fields which we never thought will. For example, Police department is using it in observing the trend in crimes. Experts feel that had all all big financial institutions in US (Lehman Brothers, Merill Lynch, America International Group etc.) used a proper BI solution, they wouldn't have landed in the current quagmire. In the current scenario, an organization needs to set up its own infrastructure its users' needs. It would be a dream come true for many business users if BI is delivered as a service. We see that there a paradigm shift is happening. Tools like Cognos are now delivering reports over Web.
Ideally a Bi solution should be user friendly. It should very easy to navigate and should be less complex in filtering and getting required data. In general, people are more comfortable in using portals. It would be good if we can have a BI solution that is delivered through portals. Such a solution will truly empower the frontend sales folks and help them in making judicious decision, which will bring in lots or returns for the investment by a company.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
SaaS in Business Intelligence...
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2 comments:
Your analysis about Saas is reasonable. Recently I came across Informatica OnDemand & Business Objects OnDemand. These providers promised services like Data Replication, Data Validation and Scheduling Data imports and exports. I am not sure about the core BI functionality but heard from few BI guys that these solutions are true business accelerators, and I feel these solutions will dominate the market as far as BI space is concerned.
And Salesforce.com has opened up its barracks by introducing revolutionary concepts like Platform as a Service (PaaS), Logic as a Service, Database as a Service.
I am sure that OnDemand space has no parallels in the near future, when seen in the context of the current financial crisis around the world.
Yes, solutions as service offerings are picking up pace. Vendors should keep listening to voices of customer. If they fail to do it, they get crushed in the competition.
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