Social Intelligence by Laura Edell

[QUOTE=lauraedell;4016]Cloud intelligence will make BI more accessible than ever before. Think about organizations whose IT organizations rule with the iron fist, making hardware and software procurement more difficult than it needs to be, often thwarting the good intentions of those who want to bring business intelligence to their business constituents. The cloud offers an environment which IS secure (if you go with the right cloud infrastructure). This is my opinion (which I stress is just my opinion): I currently leverage Amazon's elastic cloud environment with Microstrategy's AMI for the business intelligence tier. Enablement technologies such as using Novell Identity Manager and Novell Access Manager have taken security in the cloud to the next level. And, this level, as provided the comfort where needed. Huntington Bank, for example, uses both Novell products to enable them to confidently adopt cloud applications within their private banking sector, helping them to achieve the cost saving benefits of the cloud.

I believe in Amazon and even Google's cloud offerings, knowing that they offer a more trustworthy infrastructure, than, say, Microsoft, for example.

And yes, even Amazon has had their share of issues in the past. BUT, if banks can leverage cloud offerings these days, than you have to feel comfortable that you too can use it confidently, too.

Having said all that, once your data is secure in the cloud, than BI in the cloud is an ideal place for organizations who cannot afford the large ticket license cost of enterprise BI solutions, or have the IT example I shared above, where internal politics and agendas can derail the best of BI deployments. Cloud intelligence, the marriage of BI and cloud computing, have the cost basis of a per user offering, which is very attractive to those who aren't sure they are ready for BI as well. Lastly, my cloud BI environments run much faster than any desktop, remote desktop, virtual environment or server environment that I have worked with in the past.
To give you a sense, when I installed SQL 2008 the other day, on a Windows 2008 64 bit Server, the install took less than 14 minutes for the entire SQL stack (SQL SVR, SSAS, SSRS, SSIS, BIS, and management tools). If you have ever installed it locally or on a server, it can take up to an hour depending on whether you are leveraging network resources or not.[/QUOTE]