SaaS BI: Fast, Affordable Insight

Author: David White, Aberdeen Group

‘Pervasive business intelligence—BI for the masses—is often described, but rarely achieved. Conventional BI approaches have enjoyed limited success, partly due to high up-front costs and complexity that often comes with those solutions. However, prior Aberdeen Group research shows increasing interest in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business intelligence, with twice as many organizations using this deployment approach as one year ago – 15% in 209 compared to 7% in 2008.

This Analyst Insight is based on data collected from more than 400 BI users using two separate surveys during 2010. The research seeks answers to three major questions of SaaS business intelligence deployments: can SaaS bring business intelligence to new user populations or areas of business; can SaaS change the economics of BI deployment, and does SaaS foster a more agile approach to business intelligence?