Zhang Yang，Huang Yulong

(University of Nottingham Ningbo,Ningbo 315100,China)

Business Intelligence as a Service—SaaS BI Introduction and Recommendations

Zhang Yang，Huang Yulong

(University of Nottingham Ningbo,Ningbo 315100,China)

Characterized as automated access,analysis,management,improvement,identification,and efficiency,SaaS BI has played a significant role recently.This essay presents information about SaaS BI,such as,the generic reason for prevalent,advantages and limitations of SaaS BI,current market overview,tendency of development of SaaS BI,and applications in business.This paper uses the literature study and descriptive study methods in order to analysis the influence and functions of SaaS BI to the businesses and coping strategies.

software-as-a-service(SaaS),business intelligence(BI),mid-size enterprises

1 Introduction

According to Howson (2007)Business Intelligence is a set of technologies and processes that allow people at all level of an enterprise to access influence and analyze data,to manage operations, improve performance, identify opportunities,and act effectively.SaaS for BI functions and applications are supported by a vendor as a service,access over the Internet,without the need to deploy and maintain an on-premises solution.In recent years,managers of mid-size enterprises have taken tremendous advantage of the Business Intelligence to improve organizational strategic decisionmaking process.However,one major problem faced by midsize enterprises is budgets and IT resources.Which are essential to rapid deployment and the need to reduce the operational overhead.In this paper it is vital to analyze the main drivers of SaaS BI,present the current market overview and business applications of SaaS BI,the advantages and limitations to indicate the tendency of SaaS BI in the future.Finally,recommendations to mid-size enterprises to adopt and integrate SaaS BI will be provided.

2 The generic reason for prevalence

Due to the fierce competition,Business Intelligence has to deploy mid-size as well as small business entrepreneurs.Generally,the cost of BI software is expensive and many mid-size enterprises may not consider to purchase.On the other hand some enterprises may not have the appropriate need.Hence,there lies a tendency of the concept that On-Premises is more prevalent as a new type of requirement by customers(IDC,2009).Software as a Service becomes a new pet for a customer who treats new types software differently from traditional software,such as,installing,downloading updates,maintenance of hardware to ensure the affluent operating and uninstalling.

3 Advantages and limitations of SaaS BI

With theseadvantages,BusinessIntelligenceasa Service(SaaS BI)turns into the ground breaking outcome as solution(Gartner,2009).There is an increased demand for BI software.It is proven to be cost effective and the outcomes have better solution.This has led to integrate BI software as a service.Since,the integration of Business Intelligence and Software as a Service,a new model of Business Intelligence which is called SaaS BI has been deployed.Further it is useful to everyone to critically think of the advantages and drawbacks or limitations.

To begin with,there are several main advantages for SaaS BI.First,process of SaaS BI will be less time consuming and less expensive than the traditional solutions.This will lead to a quicker return on investment(IDC,2009).Second,the revenues are not recorded by the SaaS providers until the complication of implement,which indicates that both service providers and consumers are fairly dependent on decreasing the quantity of suppliers who calls ‘time value’(ibid).The SaaS BI can help companies to be aware of cost savings, efficiency, and opportunities for process improvements that they have not been identified by others.Moreover,SaaS BI also plays a significant role in decision making with the help through different tools getting contact with more employees and companies.In addition,Gartner(2009)states that with the SaaS BI service which is more specified for the particular industry,companies can achieve more efficiency.Finally,the flexibility of SaaS BI seems to be apparent,the adoption and shutoff of SaaS BI becomes convenient and independent by business.It is possible to be customized for every organizational customer who seeks to integrate service package more suitable for the operational activities(Gartner,2009).It can dare to predict that SaaS BI drives the whole technology moving forward to a groundbreaking age.

Although there are so many advantages,limitations still exist within the integration.First,internet bandwidth is the major problem for organizational consumers who need to upload their data to server and then the result of data analysis can be presented.Users have to wait long time when their data is uploading to the vendor.According to the research of Forrester，80%of total cost will occur in this process for uploading the data.In addition,the security problem is still a seriously consideration to users.They are not certain about the risk for releasing their classified,private data or information to a third party.For instance,the vital data of user may be released by someone who works for the vendor company for revenge due to the unfair treatment.These drawbacks are seen as the limitations for potential consumers when they consider to whether to accept the integration service of SaaS BI.

4 Current Market Overview

Today the percentage of revenue from SaaS BI offering is insignificant,account for less than 5%,of the overall BI platform market revenue.It is small and medium-sized enterprises in the current circumstance use these leased applications.Whereas,mostofthe large organizations ordinarily do not plan to outsource their data warehouse(DW)and related technologies(Gartner,2009).However,Gartner mention that the number of suppliers with SaaS BI has grown in recent years,as the figure 1 shows theincreasingexpectationsofSaaSBIin therecent years.

Several companies including some well-known brand have embraced this new model for Business Intelligence software distribution.As the famous BI provider,such as SAP Business Objects,the world’s leading Business Intelligence software company launched and hosted on demand platform(available at http://www.ondemand.com)to deliver analytic and reporting functionality.Besides,Pivot Link as one of the major actors of the on-demand Business Intelligence(http://www.pivotlink.com)offers a SaaS BI solution covering data analysis,reporting and dashboards.

5 Applications in Business

According to the nature and characteristics of SaaS BI,small and midsize businesses or business departments within enterprises are the major consumers/buyers.The majority of the new user demand addressed by three types of SaaS BI offerings stated by Gartner(2009):

First, analytic applications support performance management with pre-packed functions for specific solutions.The Planning and Host Analytics for corporate performance management(CPM)can be as an example.

Second,BI platform is the most useful applications in business,including SAP and Pivot Link,this provides a development and integration environment, information delivery and analysis.

Third,information management infrastructure provides the data architecture and data integration infrastructure,such as the Informatics for data application integration and Pervasive Software and so on.

6 Recommendations

SaaS is an application based on the internet providing online software service.Company customers lease the service on demand (ChinaBI.net,2010).Not onlywithinthe mainland China,but also overseas,the mode of SaaS has succeeded in the field of CRM (Customer Relationship Management)and earned considerable revenue(Gartner,2009).There is an innate limitation for SaaS BI that there is too much data and information to process with limited or controlled bandwidth and limited resources like hardware of server load (ChinaBI.net,2010).But,the possibility will still burn that SaaS BI may be successful in the midsize and small size companies with current combination with CRM as a service or either in the field of digital economy.According to ChinaBI.net(2010),it predicted that SaaS BI will derive rapid growth in the year of 2010.

In the current market of SaaS BI,there are both traditional BI vendor and rising businesses which focus on the signal SaaS BI.It also provides more options to the organization buyers.Finally,as researcher we prefer to give some recommendations to the organizations when they select the vendor to provide them SaaS BI as the following aspects.

First,if the completed functions can be supported all the time by the vendor of SaaS BI should be considered by the businesses.Some of the businesses just focus on the current needs of SaaS BI;this would bring the potential problems in the long term development of business.

Second,there may be some hidden cost which is also noteworthy.Although the initial investment of SaaS BI is usually small but some suppliers may require customers to purchase additional license, especially with business development and adjustment.Hence,in the deployment of BI applications,the relationship between departments and the entire company should be balanced.As the initial cost of SaaS BI is not very large,some departments within the company have the independence to make decision.It is possible to lead to the emergence of BI data islands which will bring a lot of future data integration problems.

Finally,the security of data is a vital problem and cannot be ignored.The businesses should not totally depend on the vendor to process and restore their data,they should lead-in and lead-out the data for a certain time spans.

7 Conclusion

In conclusion,SaaS BI will be a shining star in recent future forthe rapid growth and potentialvalue of cost-efficiency.This essay contributes as the guide of future technology development and the authors expect that SaaS BI will do support cost-efficiency for most customers.

2010-06-25）