On-Demand, Cloud-Based BI and Data Warehousing: Prime-Time Players in a Down Economy or Over-Hyped Technologies?

by Curt Hall

Organizations today may choose from a broad range of on-demand and "cloud-based" BI and data warehousing options, ranging from reporting, dashboards, and focused analytic applications (offered as licensable services) to hosted data integration services and full-blown managed data warehouses. These on-demand providers hope to benefit from a down economy by offering organizations a way to forgo having to implement costly data warehousing and BI applications inhouse, in effect offering to "rent" them a "solution" to help with their data integration, data management, and reporting and analysis needs.