A recurring theme in my writing is the value that having data in the clouds can bring. A few days ago I wrote about one example – aggregated and anonymized statistical data and how it brings accuracy and efficiency to the otherwise tedious job of Government statistics. Today it’s the turn to talk about cloud analytics. The launch this week of Model Metrics’ new cloud analytics solution reminded me just how enabling data in the cloud can be.

As organizations move some or all of their business operations to the cloud, they face a growing need for advanced reporting and analytics designed specifically for cloud computing data. They also need to be able to integrate this data with data generated from traditional IT systems.

Model metrics itself allows organizations using salesforce.com to extend reporting functionality using real-time automated data integration and instant business intelligence capabilities. Using the Visualforce platform, Model Metrics can mash up external data to give an integrated analytics dashboard.

It’s not a new space – we wrote about some of the competitors back in May. But Business Intelligence is being disrupted by Cloud analytics, and the reasons are clear. As Gary commented in his post, traditional on-premise BI is known for:

high barriers to entry, long enterprise sales cycles and expensive software licensing.

With this new breed of cloud based analytics offerings however, loading data into a tool and configuring the data so that meaningful analysis can be drawn is a thing of the past. It’s doing to analysis, what SaaS did to provisioning on generic applications.

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

1 Comment
  • Great post Ben. I really like your analysis of cloud data and how enabling in can be. We have a community for IM professionals (www.openmethodology.org) and have bookmarked this post for our users. Look forward to reading your work in the future.

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