Hands up please all of those “salt of the earth” small to mid sized business owners who need and want a simple solution to their Business Intelligence requirements. Nothing fancy or excessive or crammed with an acronym loaded sales pitch. Something that creates efficiency for you, gives you great visibility of the important matters that drive your business, offers a flexible pricing option (read “not tied in to long term contracts”) and doesn’t cause any major distractions to the primary task of generating revenue for your business. Any number of statistical reports currently available for public consumption illustrates the vast numbers of small and midsize entities that are going out of business. So far, the chances of these businesses, which for my money constitute the unsung heroes of our economy, getting any financial bailout package, would be about equal to or less than George W Bush making a successful comeback to American politics.
So why aren’t we all preoccupied with identifying ways to assist the small to mid sized guys weather the current storm. Business Intelligence (BI), and specifically “BI in the Cloud” is a business tool that can help. Rapid technology developments coupled with the commoditisation of bandwidth means vendors can offer simpler, cheaper and easier access to Business Intelligence to a global market, which in turn can help the business owner drive the most critical parts of his or her business to push through this recession. Not every business will be suitable for BI in the cloud but the benefit of flexible licensing and pricing online means that businesses can reallocate budgets as computing requirements in the businesses evolve. The good times will return and the corporate fat cats will once again stuff their wallets, join exclusive clubs, entertain at exotic locations and blow filthy amounts of cash to satisfy their bloated egos, but in the mean time let’s get behind the guys that make the economy tick.
