Thursday, May 15, 2008

The impact of the cloud on BI

http://www.databasecolumn.com/2008/05/cloud-and-bi.html

The author envisions some impacts of cloud computing on the BI software industry:

  • easier evaluation (nothing to download, no machine / space / skills required to install, no configuration, nothing to uninstall)

  • more short-term ad-hoc analysis

  • more BI projects because funding is easier and less resources required

  • extension of data warehouse projects to medium size companies

  • analytic SaaS market will grow quickly


Well, maybe it won't be so easy, it will be interesting to track real projects going in this direction and how they succeed/fail.

Obviously this "BI over the cloud" requires a new kind of database technology (database column is linked with Vertica):

  • Share-nothing architecture, to quickly asborb peaks in on-demand analysis.

  • Aggressive data compression to reduce storage costs. ==> Agreed, but what about performance?

  • Automatic grid replication and failover ==> The cloud must prove it is at least as robust as an internal installation.

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