BI in the Cloud

I have closely followed many technology trends for over 30 years as a leading supply chain consultant.  I fondly remember that in the mid 80's I delivered a keynote speech at the HIDA conference and reported that penetration of EDI ordering transactions in the healthcare channel had reached 7% of all orders.  And I boldly predicted that it would increase to 35% in the next year and soon be over 70%.  When I gave an update at the next years' conference, I reported that EDI ordering transactions were at 8% and would reach 35% and 70% in the next two years!  I was eventually right, but learned the lesson that technology adoption always takes longer that you expect.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) BI has been gaining market momentum for the past four or five years.  However, it has evolved as a curious concept to a serious consideration for many companies.  And it appears that it has now reached that tipping point.  In the past month, I have attended the SAP Sapphire Conference in Orlando and also heard John Haggerty, the top BI analyst at AMR, speak on a webinar.  At the Sapphire Conference,  Leo Apotheker, CEO of SAP, and other senior management speakers, focused significant attention on SaaS BI and cloud computing.   SAP signaled that is was serious about SaaS BI, and backed it up with significant attention from the podium and on the floor. 

I also heard John Haggerty report on his recent research, and he indicated that 72% of companies give SaaS BI serious consideration as an option in the selection of their BI solutions.  He talked about the cost, time and mixed success of traditional BI implementations, and suggested more and more companies are following a strategy of  utilizing both a traditional BI approach and a SaaS approach for selected applications.  Oco refers to this approach as "Complementary BI" - that is, large companies will build their EDW and core BI applications, but will complement this core approach with SaaS BI solutions which can be used when it is important to get solutions in quickly or when IT resources are constrained or when budgets need to be stretched and you need a lower cost solution.  SaaS BI will not be the core of your BI strategy but will be an important and complementary component of this strategy.

Has your company considered a SaaS BI solution?  Does the idea of a complementary BI approach a reasonable consideration?  I welcome your comments.