Stairway to Heaven with Cloud-Based Analytics Solutions

Business intelligence and analytics are often the most complex area of a company’s IT environment. Make sure that your enterprise data is being stored securely and is easily accessible for day-to-day use.

The Case for a Cloud-Based Analytics Solution

Analytics solutions of the past are reactive and do not provide real-time information. Insights are constrained to a flat, static report that fails to capture your data’s true richness and variation. While useful, these reports only tell you what happened so that you can better prepare for the next time in any given context.

Cloud Business intelligence and analytics solutions have become highly mature and feature-rich in recent years. Instead of making business decisions based on old data, your insights offer a real-time and predictive look into your next moves.

On-Premises vs. Cloud Analytics

When you begin your evaluation of cloud analytics solutions, it’s helpful to understand how it relates to traditional on-premises options.

• Flexibility – Cloud platforms deliver flexibility by allowing you to easily reconfigure them as needed to match your footprint in the market. You can add or downsize your resources based on your current requirements.
• Only pay for what you need – When you have an on-premises solution, you’re paying for the system’s maximum capacity, whether you use it or not. With cloud analytics, you only pay for what you use.
• Lower cost of ownership – The total cost of ownership for cloud infrastructure is typically lower than on-premises, as the providers are responsible for many expenses that would otherwise be the responsibility of your company with an on-premises solution.
• More accessibility – You have access to a wider talent pool to build, maintain, and improve cloud-based systems since staff members don’t need to be on-site to work on them.
• Less disruptive – When you roll out cloud analytics infrastructure, you don’t need to disrupt your existing processes on-premises. You can build the cloud-based solution parallel to your current system and then switch over when everything is production-ready.
• Less downtime – Adding resources to your cloud analytics infrastructure generally doesn’t involve disruptive downtime.
• Easier migrations – The ease of migrating from one cloud solution to the other means that you can choose the architecture that best serves your business today, rather than making a ten-year commitment.

Possibilities Abound with Cloud Analytics

The Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics requirements for your different business groups can vary significantly. The data your sales team needs to successfully close leads is not the same as what your operations team needs to keep the business running.

With cloud analytics, you have the opportunity to use multiple solutions that best fit each group’s needs, rather than compromising on functionality. When you’re looking at tools, you also have the option of tailoring it to the types of reports that users such as data scientists, visual analysts, and data miners utilize.

Cloud Analytics Platforms to Consider

You have many powerful options to choose from with cloud analytics, including:

• Azure Analytics Services
• Oracle Analytics Cloud
• Amazon Web Services

Cloud Analytics Tailored to Your Organization

Once you decide to adopt cloud analytics, you’ll want to choose the delivery model that works best for your company.

• Full cloud: Your analytics solution is fully in the cloud with this option. Everything from the underlying infrastructure to the data you’re analyzing goes through the cloud.
• Hybrid on-premises and cloud: If you have a heavy investment in on-premises resources or want to have more control over your data, you can take a hybrid approach. You leverage the infrastructure you already have on-site while gaining cloud advantages such as anytime, anywhere access.

Tackle Your Move to the Cloud with Datavail Cloud Migration Services

A migration to cloud analytics solutions isn’t without concerns, especially if this is your organization’s first time adopting cloud technology for critical functions. If you run into trouble, help isn’t far away when you partner with Datavail for cloud migration consulting.

Datavail Solves for Cloud Migration Challenges

• Not enough IT resources for a migration: If your in-house IT department doesn’t have enough people or the right specialists for cloud migration, Datavail fills in the gaps with highly experienced personnel.
• Unexpected cloud migration costs: Datavail can guide your organization through the planning process, so you know exactly how much your cloud analytics solution will cost.
• Problems integrating cloud analytics with on-premises resources: Our database experts will get to the bottom of integration issues and troubleshoot the issues.
• Performance issues following migration: Tuning and optimizing your cloud solutions allow you to maximize the value of your investment. We’ll track down any bottlenecks and technical issues, so you have the performance you expect.

 
Get your cloud migration project started today with Datavail.