2012 - The Year Cloud Analytics Takes Off
20.05.12
Sunset for Traditional BI Vendors
For the on-premises BI vendors, the clock is ticking. Their tool suites are based on old architectures. They're hard to set up, deploy, manage and use. And they're expensive - with entry-level price tags typically $50,000 and heading into the 7-figure range quickly - not including hardware. The clock started ticking years ago for on-premises business application providers - now it's the on-prem BI vendors' turn.
It's not that the Cloud just magically makes things easier and better - it's that Cloud applications have better architectures, with more focus on usability and rapid time-to-value. New Cloud-based applications don't have to deal with 20 years of on-premises legacy code. Almost universally, Cloud-based analytics tools are faster to deploy, easier to use, more productive, and more cost effective. And the SaaS-based "pay as you go" pricing models that allow customers to scale their spending up (or down) as they see the benefits of the software is a stark contrast to the world of on-premises software, which continues to be dominated by license fees and yearly maintenance fees.
Source: ebizQ (blog)