The cloud hasn’t been a particularly popular destination for analytics applications, whether you’re talking about basic business intelligence or advanced analytics. It isn’t suddenly becoming a data-analysis hot spot, but there are signs that organizations are increasingly viewing cloud-based BI and analytics architectures as viable alternatives to on-premises systems.
Two recent surveys both point to an upswing in the use of cloud BI tools. Their usage numbers don’t match up, perhaps partly because they asked different questions. Thirty-one percent of 383 respondents to a Dresner Advisory Services survey in early 2017 said their organizations were running cloud-based BI applications; meanwhile, 46% of 347 respondents said they were using the cloud for BI or data management in a survey conducted jointly by BARC GmbH and Eckerson Group in the fall of 2016.