How cloud computing is (not) changing the way we do BI

Cloud computing and BI (Business Intelligence) are technologies of choice to address today´s business needs. They allow companies to optimize IT and become more competitive and productive. Implementing BI solutions in the cloud brings not just benefits, but also new challenges that need to be addressed. On technology side there are security, communication infrastructure (increasingly mobile) and speed. New technology and business models are arising because we are dealing with large quantities of distributed data which BI can (and often have to) use as new sources of information. Combining these data sources with new cloud services may significantly change the way some businesses are being run today. In order to do that successfully, we have to understand the basic principles of solution architectures in the world dominated by clouds. The new idea presented in the paper is that two additional types of service models, specifically the DaaS (Data as a Service) and AaaS (Analysis as a Service) will be widely used in cloud environments in very near future. The paper also addresses the “marriage” of cloud and mobile computing, entirely new area crowded with business and IT opportunities and new models that might be used to create and implement BI using private, public and hybrid cloud solutions.