PivotLink’s vision for the New BI intends to create a business world where everyone is empowered – especially business users who are ultimately responsible for the decisions and outcomes made using enterprise data. Of the many conversations I had with attendees and analysts, several points stood out in support of our vision for the New BI:

1. Business users are yearning for tools that will allow them to explore and analyze their data independently without waiting for IT
2. IT won’t resist something that makes business users more effective while reducing their workload
3. The New BI will help build a bridge between IT and the line of business thereby driving rapid cultural changes

While the majority of the Gartner crowd is still ensconced in on-premise BI solutions, there is increasing interest in and shift towards SaaS BI as well as other next-gen solutions like mobile BI. In my opinion, this is being driven by business users who are starting to have a greater influence in the BI buying process and who have a greater need for analytics as part of their day-to-day work activities. Bill Hostman’s Monday morning keynote spoke about how IT needs to get closer to the business and help define top level metrics for organizational performance, while linking those metrics to the operational metrics that are used every day to run the company. Howard Dresner’s Tuesday afternoon keynote touched on similar themes. From his persepctive, business intelligence tools are going from being in the hands of a few to the hands of many and this will eventually create stronger “cultures of performance” in organizations. He also commented on how innovations in the UI and cloud computing are allowing the industry to finally deliver on the promise of insight for everyone.

Several other analysts and sessions called out the future of BI. Specifically, Rita L. Sallam’s two sessions entitled Achieving the Holy Grail of BI through Collaborative Decision Making and Defining your BI Platform mentioned SaaS BI as a compelling and viable option. Whit Andrew’s session on BI and the Google Generation: Searching for New Ways to Analyze Information gave a glimpse into the UI of the future – which will look a lot different than they do today. This session reminded me of an earlier post I wrote which highlighted the notion that “your grandfather’s BI” will likely fall short of meeting the needs of an emerging workforce raised on You Tube, Twitter, Google and the iPhone.

All in all it was a great conference. I was excited by the wide range of practitioners who took an interest in learning about PivotLink’s SaaS BI and their ensuing desire to figure out how to bring the New BI into their organizations. There is no doubt in my mind that the BI industry is about to experience alot of change. And PivotLink will be there leading the way!!

Did you attend the conference? What sessions and conversations sparked your interest? Did you walk away with a great tip or strategy to approach things differently? Let us know.

“In the economic downturn, interest in SaaS solutions has increased in the past year, although it is still a small fraction of the overall market.” It continues “…. Moving BI off-premises may not suit all organizations and all use cases, especially those dealing with highly sensitive data. Many firms are evaluating hybrid options for deployments leveraging both private and public clouds, as well as a combination of on-premises and off-premises solutions. But firms that find the SaaS value proposition of more rapid, lower-cost deployments attractive should evaluate SaaS as an option.”

Let us look at a few of Gartner’s points that deserve a close look:

1. Moving BI off-premises may not suit all organizations and all use cases, especially those dealing with highly sensitive data

The above is true but it has less to do with security than with functional use cases. A SAS-70 Type II certified service – very different from and much more than a SAS 70 certified data center is widely accepted as a standard for sensitive data. PivotLink customers that are public companies and companies that are covered by HIPAA have guided PivotLink into achieving SAS 70 Type II certification. They feel comfortable using PivotLink with highly sensitive data because the entire service – data center, procedures and personnel are covered by an external audit.

2. Impact of  the economic downturn

There was an economic downturn during 2001-2003 and there have been many before.On-premise deployments is how IT has been delivered since the early 80s. During all the previous downturns, CEOs were supported by each department on scaling down – shutting down stores, cutting product lines, expenses. IT however was a problem child. This was for two reasons: One, data always grows, be it good economy or bad, so IT cannot really cut infrastructure. Two, during all the previous downturns CIOs did not have SaaS options. Due to a significant CAPEX in IT, IT can severely limit a CEOs option to free up cash during downturns. CIOs did not have many options in all previous downturns. There is only so much that can be outsourced.

Today, CIOs have plenty of options in almost every category of enterprise application software from Email to ERP.

With frequent ups and downs in business cycles, more CIOs will choose SaaS to support their CEOs to be more agile. CIOs know that the technology is there – Cisco has carpeted the earth with Mbps networks and will soon move to Gbps. Encryption technology, RSA Tokens, SAS 70 Audits all can make security adequately tight. SaaS companies now routinely provide over 99% availability. SaaS is a fundamental shift in how information technology will be delivered in this decade.

3. Firms that find rapid, lower cost deployment attractive should evaluate SaaS as an option.

Are there firms that don’t want rapid and lower cost deployments? What Gartner seems to be implying is that there are risks in going with SaaS.

These risks can easily cause anxiety in organizations evaluating SaaS BI, if not put in context. SaaS is not a new model. Every category of application source is moving to the cloud. CRM (Sales, Service and Marketing) has already moved, except in a few verticals. ERP, Finance, Expense Management, Talent Management. SaaS is designed to address the pain points of slow and high cost deployments. As many data sources move to the cloud a tipping point will reach when cloud BI will be the preferred option. SaaS is not new – Online Banking, Trading, e-Commerce are examples of SaaS. We all use them and trust the way they work.

The risks that are unique to SaaS are functionality fit and vendor viability. These risks can be mitigated via understanding the outcomes of the technology purchase and by evaluating the integration capabilities and financial health of the vendor.

Where does SaaS BI fit and where it doesn’t?

• Requirements around Large Data Volumes

If you have a data volume in the few hundred terabytes or petabytes range, there may not be a SaaS vendor today to handle such volume, if the expectation is to get ad-hoc reporting. For example, moving the enterprise data warehouses at companies like Safeway, Sears etc.  to SaaS is not feasible. However it might be feasible to give a sub-set of data to a SaaS vendor so that merchandisers in a specific division can do ad-hoc reporting.

• Requirements around Frequency of Data Updates

If your daily updates are in terabytes of data, the network and refresh latency may not meet your data availability needs. For example, if you are a company that is even 1/3rd the scale of an Amazon.com and want to collect click through data and want to share the results with suppliers multiple times daily, then although SaaS is a fit from a sharing model, it may not be a fit when it comes to transferring terabytes, multiple times a day to SaaS vendor.

• Functionality fit

If your company needs an MDM solution, a DW solution and a Data Mining solution all integrated into one, then the SaaS choices are limited to none. There are SaaS choices emerging in individual areas like MDM and Data Mining and DW but not under the same roof or integrated enough. Companies should think of BI not in terms of the suite definition imposed by self-serving large vendors like Oracle and SAP but in terms of the problem at hand the cost / benefit of the SaaS solution.

In summary, although security should be evaluated, it is no longer an unsolved problem. Organizations today must look at business agility, speed and empowering the business users for self-service when looking at SaaS vs. On-premise choices.