Take, for example, the answers to the question: "What stands in the way of enterprise-wide adoption?" Half of respondents said "integration and compatibility problems", while 48% cited "ease of use issues. Some 38% said "software licenses are too expensive", 33% said "training staff is too time-intensive and costly", and 28% said "scalability issues" held them back from fully deploying BI in their enterprises.

All of those perceived problems are solved with an on-demand BI solution. As I talked about in my post earlier this week, an appliance-based BI solution goes a long way in lowering total cost of ownership, and the same goes for a SaaS solution. On-demand BI lowers TCO precisely because it eliminates the costly and time-consuming issues the companies cited in this study: integration headaches, complexity, expensive software licenses, staff training programs and scalability issues. With an on-demand BI solution, these issues become non-issues.

You just "plug in" the appliance or turn on the SaaS solution (no complicated integration required); dashboards are easy to use, even for non-IT staff; there are no software licenses to pay; there is little or no training required (because on-demand BI solutions are, as I just said, easy to use for non-IT employees); and on-demand BI is infinitely scalable (because you can always add another appliance or increase the number of users on your SaaS contract).

And when these issues are eliminated, costs go down, way down. Which is why on-demand BI also solves another of the problems that companies cited in the study as a reason they've held back on BI deployments; some 45% said there is "no clear ROI" on BI projects. When implementing BI is as easy as turning on a SaaS service, ROI becomes a lot more positive.

Let's look at how costs are managed in an appliance-based BI solution. First off, there are no licensing fees to pay for an appliance, because companies pay one price for a package including a pre-configured hardware server, the BI application, and all other necessary software - regardless of the number of users. Second, there are few fees related to installation and configuration, because a BI appliance comes preconfigured out of the box, and most companies have complete implementations up and running in less than 90 days - and some in less than a week. That compares with an average of six months to implement a traditional BI solution. Third, a BI appliance really starts to show its capability to lower TCO in the deployment and maintenance area. That's because BI appliances are designed as "self-service" products that require no IT knowledge to use, so deployment is fast and requires no extra training, and old appliances can be upgraded in a day or two by swapping in a new one. Lastly, appliances also reduce costs in the scalability and performance category. Unlike a traditional operational BI solution that uses hardware servers and operating systems configured for multipurpose computing, an appliance uses 64-bit memory addressing an operating system optimized for that single purpose, ensuring fast response times even for large numbers of users. This efficient resource utilization means BI appliances can often support the same number of users with as few as one-tenth as many hardware servers as other approaches to operational BI would require.

Lowering TCO is top of mind for every company, which is why BI appliances are a great choice for operational BI deployments.

I wouldn't call the trend to expand the reach of enterprise applications by offering them on a hardware-based appliance a full-out "war" - more like a "revolution". But I do agree with his assessment that "appliance hype is building to a fever pitch." That's because many enterprise software vendors, from the startups to the biggies, are embracing the appliance as an efficient way to get their applications to the most customers with the least headache. And it's working. More mid-size customers are able to implement BI solutions, and other enterprise applications, because appliances make it easy and painless to do so.

Integrated, plug-and-play appliances are a welcome sight to small and mid-size companies that don't have the IT resources to implement a full-blown, traditional BI solution. By decreasing complexity and lowering total cost of ownership, BI appliances are bringing BI to the masses. I say "vive la revolution!"

On-demand BI is a great solution for mid-size companies that want to tap the power of BI without having to rely on an IT team to do a lot of behind-the-scenes upkeep. Compassion International, a non-profit organization focused on reducing child poverty, was in that boat. [http://www.celequest.com/news/pressreleases/pr_061218_compassion.aspx]

The organization implemented the LAVA BI appliance from Cognos On Demand to get better visibility into its donations workflow system and accelerate processing of contributions. Compassion had the system up and running in just a few days, and quickly increased the efficiency of its donations system. Using On-demand BI, Compassion is able to get more money more quickly to the children who need it most. Now that's a great BI benefit.

Gartner recently came out with a study that proves what I have known for a long time: many companies are floundering when it comes to implementing an effective, simple and coherent business intelligence strategy. The report found that many organizations spend upwards of 70% of their BI budgets to resolve ongoing problems, instead of investing in new BI technologies and processes.

If that is not a case for on-demand BI, I don't know what is. Many companies, especially mid-sized businesses with few IT resources, can easily get bogged down in the implementation and ongoing upkeep of a traditional BI system. These companies could instead opt for an on-demand BI model, where updates and upkeep are automatic. That leaves organizations more room to actually use their BI platform, instead of spending time on IT maintenance. And that means they can start gaining valuable strategic insights and improve business processes, the original goal of BI.

I think we will see more announcements like these in coming months, as on-demand BI becomes more pervasive in the industry. In fact, on-demand BI announcements like these suggest that BI is one step closer to being available to the masses, not just to big companies with large budgets. And because most on-demand BI tools come with easy-to-use dashboards, BI should also become more pervasive throughout these companies, with new types of users getting access to key business information for the first time. It is about time employees who have had no access to BI information (80% or more in some estimates) got the keys to the castle.

The full article is available at:

www.dmreview.com/ee/assets/2007/03-07ee.pdf

- Diaz

They evaluated several BI solutions but ultimately chose to go with the appliance model because of the simplicity and speed of deploying the appliance.

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20070320005149&newsLang=en

- Diaz

Of course, I will also use this blog to keep readers updated on the integration of Celequest technology into the Cognos performance management platform.

I hope that my colleagues will chime in with their thoughts and insights along the way.

- Diaz