Business intelligence tools have been all the rage for some time now. Cloud computing is one of the current rages in the IT world. Software as a service is attractive to companies because there are less up-front costs, pay as you go billing, quicker deployments, and no infrastructure to manage. And Business Intelligence is critical in order to make decisions based on the best available information. So naturally, providing business intelligence solutions in the cloud is a logical progression of combining these trends. An article that I just read, BI in the Cloud? Yes, and on the Ground, Too, goes on to discuss this trend.
We are also seeing this trend. More and more of our clients need business intelligence solutions so that they can make the best possible decisions in this current economic environment. Further, with limited IT staffs, limited budgets, and limited time to make things happen, more and more of our clients want us to host their business intelligence solutions so that the deployment can take place quickly with limited involvement from their already stretched thin internal IT resources.
Additionally, we are also seeing a trend that even goes beyond hosting business intelligence applications. Many of our clients do not even want to learn and interact with the business intelligence tool. They do not have the time and desire as they are working to make things happen on a day to day basis. If we give them a tool, it may just sit there. Instead, they just want answers to their questions. Simply, they provide us their data and then we set-up the data framework and reporting tools in our facilities. Then, they ask questions and we provide the answers. The more answers that are provided usually lead to follow-up questions and further answers. Sometimes, the clients ask us to also help in asking the questions based on our understanding of their data and our experience in working with data and other clients. Many times, we find the clients that are the most successful in using their data for business advantage are those that utilize a completely outsourced business intelligence solution that goes beyond just hosting it for them.
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