What Are the Benefits of Cloud Business Intelligence?

Prior moving on the cloud business intelligence, let’s just focus on the term Cloud first.

Starting from the very initial level, the cloud is the network of computer systems that appear as a single entity to the user, regardless of the location. Today there are numerous large enterprises that offer seamless access to the computing platform that utilizes multiple data center. And these data centers are deployed miles apart or in the different countries or in the different continents.

Even, customers have leverage to pay for the services that they are using, in terms of memory usage or processor. Virtual machines are used to run the applications, which are completely independent of the physical host server, so that they can move easily and quickly to other hardware or data center in case of occurrence of any problem.

No doubt, cloud computing offers great potential to the organizations and it is making profound impact on the business intelligence as well. BI basically helps the companies to process raw data that can be converted into usable business information. This process still needs huge amount of work on large data warehouses. For most of the conventional companies, the data warehouses and the business systems entering into them are on-premise. The effect of the cloud computing is broader and deeper. It is a kind of technology that companies will require either by run over or by embracing.

Some of the key advantages that cloud computing serves are ease of use, rapid implementation, and subscription pricing. Organizations today tend to move towards implementation of the Business Intelligence in the cloud so as to move all the data in data warehouses and the related processes to the cloud. Let’s have a look on its advantages and challenges:

Advantages:

• As per the size, business requirements may vary from company to company. It is quite easy to modify the Cloud-based software for a specific requirement. Even the small-size business enterprises need a tailor made solution of Business Intelligence system that suits their specific requirements and can enhance their business processes.
  
• Initial costs of installation to get a traditional IT system functioning can be very high. Nevertheless, cloud-based Business Intelligence solutions are great for reducing the initial high costs significantly because all the systems are managed by the third party service providers through remote access.
  
• Utilizing cloud based software on temporary basis without any need to buy full license is another great benefit. It is commonly referred as subscription-based system that is of great help for the companies to only pay as per their organization's usage.
  

Challenges:

• There are still lots of questions that are unanswered regarding the security detail of cloud computing platforms as a whole. Some concerns regarding the data protection ability is also there.
  
• It is quite new concept and just like any other new concept, there are unforeseen and unexpected errors. Hence, organizations need to do adjustments in an adequate manner.
  
• Companies will also have to consider the transfer of internal data outside their internal systems in contradiction of an in-house system.