Business Intelligence in the Cloud: Why Now is the Right Time

New survey results bolster the case for giving more people within an organization need access to business intelligence (BI) to do their jobs. Providing these workers with access to BI applications can pose a problem for IT. More servers would be needed to support the additional users and new efforts that pop up at a moments notice. Increasingly, companies are turning to cloud-based BI solutions. This SmartPaper looks at the challenges of supporting a growing number of BI users and the benefits of using a cloud solution for BI.

Intodaysbusinessworld,theabilitytoquicklyanalyzedataandgaininsightintothatdataiswhatallowsacompanyto differentiate itself and beat its competitors. However, companies are increasingly overwhelmed with the volume of raw data that must be searched, analyzed, and visualized before critical business decisions can be made. Compounding the problems of dealing with much larger sets of data, companies are also incorporating more types of data into their decision-making processes. In the past, an executive might only need access to inventory data in an enterprise resource management (ERM) database and sales statistics housed in a salesforce automation (SFA) database. Today, decision makers might also need to cull additional information from a variety of other sources, including spreadsheets, online databases, dynamically updated files, and so on. At the same time, for companies to be more competitive, more people within an organization need access to business intelligence (BI) to do their jobs. In fact, research studies1 have found that companies that use BI pervasively throughout the organization show an increased operating profit. Additionally, expanding access to BI information allows employees to make decisions in a shorter time. The bottom line is that when it comes to choosing between strategy alternatives, midmarket companies have found using analytics more than the competition to be especially effective. YouindicatedthatyourcompanysuseofBIismoderate.About45percentofcompaniesthathavemoderateBIusage report the time for their workers to find information has decreased. In contrast, 64 percent of companies with pervasive BI use realized a decrease in the time to find and gather decision-making information. That could be a competitive disadvantage for your company. Managers at organizations with pervasive BI can make information-based decisions faster thanyourmanagers.Intodaysfastpacedmarketplace,thatcanmakethedifferenceinwinningnewbusinessandmeeting customer demands. The nature of work is also changing and requiring companies to work across boundaries, not just within their own company. In fact, many business decisions made today require that information be shared with and collaborative insight is gathered from strategic partners, clients, and suppliers. The combination of these factors adds a great deal of complexity for both the IT department responsible for developing, deploying,andsupportingacompanysBIeffortsandforthegrowingnumberofuserswhoneedaccesstoBIbutmaylack the technical skills to use traditional solutions. This paper discusses these issues and presents some new Ziff Davis Enterprise (ZDE) research about the extent of BI use in midmarket companies, as well as the challenges these companies face when trying to expand the use of BI to more of their employees. Challenges with the current approach Traditional BI solutions were designed to serve IT analysts and developers and allowed them to customize and develop reports for business people in an organization. As business decision-makers need to act quickly and desire rapid access to information, the need to expand BI to many

more employees grows, and these traditional solutions break down. One indication of the expanding use of BI within midmarket companies and the importance BI carriers in these organizations is that even with the rough economics conditions of the last year, companies are spending money on BI. A Ziff Davis Enterprise survey of 100 decision makers in midmarket companies found that 50 percent of the respondents spent over $75,000 just on business analytics in the last 12 months. These applications complemented their use of existing BI solutions. (The survey was conducted in June 2011.) In many cases, IT simply does not have the time or resources to address the multitude of information requests and users simply do not have the time to wait. Compoundingthismatteristhefactthattherequiredinformationchangesconstantlyintodayshighlydynamiceconomy. Any new opportunity must be leveraged quickly to stay ahead of competitors. Making changes in traditional solutions requires multiple touch-points, IT-to-build queries, interfaces, and reports, and deployment of the updated solution to all users. Expanding BI to many more users raises another issue. As many BI tools were designed for analysts or workers with a technical background, they can be difficult to learn and use. And few employees have the skills to use these tools. The ZDE survey found that, on average, only 15 percent of those employees making decisions using BI information have formal training in these applications. Not surprisingly, the survey found that the most desired features for BI tools were the ability to do easy ad hoc queries and extract internal data. After these two features, other desirable attributes included data visualization, report automation, and modules that drive the user through data preparation and analysis.

Additionally, workers today often make decisions and resolve problems by sharing BI information with other employees, who may be spread across the globe, as well as with people outside the company including partners, clients, and suppliers. Interacting with these people allows a collective wisdom to be applied to any situation. So BI solutions need to be more collaborative and they must allow information sharing. To that point, 73 percent of the midmarket organizations surveyed agreed that applying BI to cross-department data is extremely valuable. To make BI more pervasive, then, existing solutions must be accessible, powerful, and easy to use for every business person.Needlesstosay,thiscandrainanyITdepartmentsbudgetandstaffsupportingtheneedsofemployeesfromevery line of business in an organization. The reason: the traditional approach to BI focused on custom-designed reports to meet the requirements of one person at a particular point in time--that particular executive who needed to make the critical decisions, as opposed to empowering each user to obtain their own information on-the-fly as they need it. And for IT, additional challenges may exist including manage the cost and infrastrcuture of traditional solutions. As more users need BI information to do their jobs, companies must install hardware and infrastructure to keep pace with the demands placed on BI systems. With the current economy, companies may find it hard to justify the cost of adding new hardware. Furthermore, by continually adding capacity, operating costs increase and complexity grows. Each new server brings recurring costs for management, maintenance, updating, power and cooling, and protection. The increased burden compounds the management challenges and costs.

ITneedsflexibilitytocontrolcosts,managescale,anddeliversupportandsolutionsquicklyandaffordably. TosupportnewBIusers,thetraditionalapproachhasbeentoaddnewserversspecifically?forthispurpose.Intodaystime of tight budgets, that can add significant expense, taking dollars away from other critical projects. To put the costs into perspective,considerthatthepurchasepriceofaserveristypicallyabout20percentofaserverstotalcostofownership (TCO), according to several studies. That means that a $2,000 server would have a TCO of about $10,000 over its lifetime (normally estimated to be three years). The remaining 80 percent is the cost of software, management, warranties, service contracts, and other things. If you need five additional servers to support you BI expansion efforts, that would require $10,000 for the equipment itself and about $40,000 of operational costs over their first three years of use. Whatsneeded? With the tough economic times, and in anticipation of the need for rapid response to new business opportunities, many organizations are turning to cloud solutions to support their core business applications. The reason: Cloud solutions are easy to use and give users great flexibility in how and where they can access their applications. Many workers routinely use cloud-based applications in their personal life and access such applications from desktop, notebook, and mobile devices. Such familiarity and comfort in using cloud offerings means training requirements can be reduced or eliminated. Cloud solutions also allow workers to get up and running quickly. They do not have to wait to install special software and in many cases, the solution can be offered as a self-service entity where the user can register (using appropriate credentials) and be running, without involving IT. From an IT perspective, cloud solutions eliminate capital expenditure costs in acquiring IT equipment, and companies can offload management of the equipment to a provider. One form of cloud solution--software-as-a-service (SaaS)--is gaining popularity for several reasons. The growing use of SaaS can be attributed to its ease of use and the familiarity many workers already have with it. For example, most people use a SaaS version of e-mail for personal use. A 2010 eWEEK article2 noted the growth of SaaS. Citing Gartner research, eWEEK reported that worldwide SaaS revenues were expected to reach $10.7 billion this year. That represents a strong, 16.2 percent increase over 2010, during which revenues grew 15.7 percent over 2009. As SaaS gains traction, many companies have migrated some common core applications, such as customer relationship management (CRM) applications, to a SaaS platform. Now they are eyeing SaaS for other applications, including business intelligence. Why BI in the cloud makes sense A cloud-based BI solution offers many benefits that can help organizations meet their changing BI needs. Using SaaS, companies can quickly deliver BI to any user who needs it. And in most cases, the SaaS approach makes BI

available to non-technical users. In fact, there is usually no learning curve with a SaaS application, so users can be productive in minutes. This point resonated with survey respondents. More than half said that SaaS-based applications are a good way to introduce non-technical users to BI. One of the great challenges with supporting BI today, as mentioned, is that many more users need access to decisionmaking information to do their jobs. With a traditional approach to BI, companies would need to select, configure, and install more servers. This is a timeconsumingprocess,whichintodaysfastpacedmarketcouldputacompanyatadisadvantage.AnondemandBIsolution offersrapidscalabilitytokeeppacewithacompanysgrowingBIrequirements. An on-demand BI solution can also deliver a number of cost savings over traditional BI. First, there is no capital cost for servers, storage, and networking infrastructure. Second, operating costs are passed on to the provider. That means the provider is responsible for management, maintenance, upgrades, and electricity; the customer pays only a subscription fee. Cloud BI offers rapid deployment and instant availability of solution upgrades. New users need only a URL (and credentials) to gain access to a BI solution. In contrast, many other BI solutions require the installation of client software to get started. When a change needs to be made to an on-demand BI solution, all of the work can be done on the hosted application. The next time a user accesses the solution, he or she has all of the updates available, with no need to download or install any patches. On-demand BI solutions are easier to use than on-premise solutions, too. Users are familiar with Web-based applications, which mean training costs can be reduced and workers can be productive in a matter of minutes. On-demand BI solutions also help workers collaborate and share ideas when making decisions. Customers can easily include partners outside the organization (specifically, outside the firewall), without compromising security. This is something that would have been prohibitively complex and difficult to do with a traditional BI solution. Such solutions would have required the establishment of user credentials within the organization, adding the user to application access privileges lists, and then working with IT to ensure the user could access the application from outside the corporate firewall. With a SaaS solution, these problems go away. Andfinally,ondemandBIiswellsuitedtotodayshighlymobileworkforce.Employeesworkinginthefieldorathomecan use their WiFi-enabled laptops and 3G/4G smartphones and tablets to get access to needed information at any time from any place.

YouindicatedthatyourcompanysneedformobileaccesstoBIinformationismoderate.Thereisonepointofcautionwith supportingyouremployeeswhoneedmobileaccesstoBI:Withtodayssmartphones,tablets,andothermobiledevices, workers have a high expectation level when it comes to conducting work outside the office. If they are used to getting BI information presented in rich charts and graphics at work, they will want a similar quality presentation on their mobile devices. Your choice of a BI app should take this into account.

Enter an on-demand solution for BI from SAP TomeetthechangingBIneedsofbusinessestoday,SAPoffersSAPBusinessObjectsBIOnDemand. It's a comprehensive business intelligence solution in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model that helps users get up and running in minutes. Billed as a self-service BI solution for everyone, SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand helps companies maximize their investment in BI technology without taking on the challenge of a long, complex development project. Using the interface in SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand, workers can follow an intuitive process to upload a spreadsheet, bring in different data sources, and explore corporate data with the software's unique search and browse functionality. They can then use the solution to visualize, report, and share BI data. The integrated solution lets workers create accurate, timely dashboards and reports. That means they no longer need to pull sales reports together from various sources or manually create pivot tables, charts, and graphs. There's no need to share spreadsheetsandreportsviaemailorpaperinstead,theycansharetheinformationonline. SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand addresses a number of business challenges, including: Lack of accessible or easy-to-use BI tools for business users Inability to securely share information with customers, partners, and suppliers outside the firewall. Limited availability of reports that provide a complete view of the business Time-intensive, manual processes to consolidate data and create reports, charts, graphs, dashboards, and visualizations Awkward processes to share information inside or outside the organization Limited resources and budget for supporting BI. SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand offers companies an affordable, subscription-based SaaS solution. It is easy for workers to learn and use, with an intuitive interface. While easy to use, SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand delivers comprehensive functionality. Users get a complete view of the business through the integration of information from multiple sources. The solution provides powerful search and browsing functionality, helping users find the information they need to make decisions quickly. SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand lets users combine data with ease by bringing together multiple spreadsheets or information from several sources to create a single report. Companies can use preconfigured, customizable templates to create interactive visualizations, charts, and graphs. Additionally, users can share data, reports, or dashboards online securely, inside or outside of an organization. The benefits of SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand can be enhanced using SAP StreamWork, a collaborative decisionmaking solution that brings together the people, information, and proven business approaches to drive fast, meaningful

results. The SAP on-demand solutions for BI can also be paired with your existing on-premise investments to deliver a complete solution to all users in an organization. SAP offers industry- and business-specific offerings to speed adoption of the solution in any type of company. For example, SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand for Salesforce.com helps companies leverage the data in Salesforce for faster, more robust sales reporting. The SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand for Salseforce.com solution embeds directly into the Salesforce CRM application to provide the right information instantly. With the SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand solution, you can obtain historical data, track trends, and find answers to urgent questions. You can improve sales forecasting with what-if analyses and combine Salesforce CRM data with other data sources for a complete view of the sales pipeline. SAP as your technology partner SAP offers a way to overcome the limitations that have prevented BI from becoming more pervasive. Specifically, SAP helps companies make BI available to more users. An SaaS BI solution from SAP simplifies deployment, reduces capital expenditures and operating costs, and provides the scalability to meet growing BI needs in businesses today. And since many business decisions today require input from several people, SAP solutions lets users easily and securely share information. SAP also lets companies leverage their past investments in BI technology. Organizations can now provide access to more typesofBIdata,leveragingthesynergiesaffordedbySAPsacquisitionofSybase.AndBIaccesscanalsobeextended easily to mobile workers using the SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand solution. The bottom line is that the SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand solution provides a simple, self-service BI interface, designed for the non-technical business user. This allows companies to increase the penetration of BI capabilities and empower any employee with the information needed to act more quickly and make smarter, more effective business decisions. For more information, visit: www.sap.com

1AnalystInsight:TheBusinessValueofPervasiveBI,AberdeenGroup,AnalystInsightReport,July2009

http://www.sap.com/netherlands/solutions/sapbusinessobjects/pdf/White_Paper_Aberdeen_Group_The_Business_Value_of_Pervasive_BI.pdf
2GartnerPredicts$10.7BillionMarketforEnterpriseSAASApplications,eWEEK,

December 14, 2010 http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Cloud-Computing/Gartner-Predicts-107-Billion-Market-for-Enterprise-SAAS-Applications-399285/