Business Intelligence delivered as a Service (SaaS)

I have been reading so much about Software as a Service (SaaS) recently. Seems it is the flavour of the month right now and it is certainly starting to gain favour with companies embarking on their own Business Intelligence initiatives.

This headline caught my eye today: "Car Toys Signs Two-Year Deal for On-Demand Business Intelligence" (http://www.sys-con.com/read/349005.htm)

Yes, on demand is definitely starting to make its way into the world of BI/BPM. Locally I know only two Vendors who offer such a service. (The Vendor quoted in the article is not represented in Australia to the best of my knowledge).

The article goes on to say that non SaaS business intelligence solutions rely on an organization's group of "power users" and IT support staff to provide analysis and reporting, whereas on demand, hosted solutions offer a self-directed capability that puts the complete power of business intelligence in the hands of every user, enabling each user to create custom analysis and reporting tailored to their own needs.

Well I think this may only be partly true. Experience has shown me that with some good training and with some of the newer web-based BI solutions available, many end users can in fact elevate themselves to self-service. Of course it takes training and it also takes a willingness.

So what makes a company select a SaaS offering rather than buying the software outright? I asked one of my clients if they would do it and their response was a resounding 'NO' - too risky to have their market sensitive information hosted outside their own firewall.

Yet our (BPM Partners) recent survey that closed in February showed that approx 1/3 of valid respondees would choose such an option. (Results available on our website).

I am a bit ambivalent at this stage - either option seems reasonable to me depending on your risk profile and appetite for outright purchase v pay-on-demand and 'keep it inhouse' v let someone else worry about the headache of maintaining databases and version control.