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JOHN O’KEEFFE,
VP EMEA, LOOKER
EDITOR’S QUESTION
Organisations are increasingly using cloud strategies to
boost evolving Digital Transformation efforts and achieve
greater agility. While public cloud engagement has no
doubt influenced this spike in adoption, businesses are increasingly
looking for solutions that are capable of going beyond standard
deployments, seeking those that also support IaaS, SaaS and
private infrastructures. It’s unsurprising, therefore, that enterprises
are opting for a more tailor-made approach to meeting their cloud
infrastructure needs, outside of current individual offerings.
No longer required to pick just one of the vast amount of
vendors and technologies available,
organisations across EMEA are choosing
to operate in a multi-cloud environment.
This has resulted in a new era in which
organisations are opting to take a modern
approach to the way in which their various
cloud offerings integrate with other tools
and platforms across the business.
Until recently, the relationship between
business intelligence systems and cloud
providers has been straightforward. BI
tools have traditionally been created with
a single-vendor architecture in mind,
allowing for seamless integration with
any one cloud model.
However, since the multi-cloud market has
matured and become the new norm, things
have changed. Companies are now taking
advantage of the many different possibilities
available to them and as a result, shifting
the way they use business intelligence
tools. They are quickly embracing the
many benefits of a build your own bespoke
offering, making it unique to their business
and data requirements.
As part of the changing nature of multicloud
– in which personalisation is
everything – it’s critical that businesses are
“
AS PART OF
THE CHANGING
NATURE OF
MULTI-CLOUD
– IN WHICH
PERSONALISATION
IS EVERYTHING
– IT’S CRITICAL
THAT BUSINESSES
ARE ALSO
ENTITLED TO
FLEXIBILITY
WHEN IT COMES
TO THEIR DATA
PLATFORMS.
also entitled to flexibility when it comes
to their data platforms. This freedom
allows organisations to review approaches
and change them as and when they
need to, based on a variety of different
infrastructures, applications and needs.
While some BI features may appear similar
on the surface, regardless of which vendor
supplies them, access to capabilities can
sometimes be limited, depending on a few
different factors. Through a multi-cloud
business intelligence approach, companies
can avoid vendor lock-in, instead leveraging
strengths from a whole catalogue of tools.
Over the next few years, as emerging
technologies such as Machine Learning (ML),
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of
Things (IoT) continue to change the nature
of business functions and operations, the
adoption of multiple cloud vendors will no
doubt grow even greater. As the importance
of multi-cloud for the future of Business
Intelligence continues to accelerate, now is
the time for organisations to work out what is
important to them and go on to define their
approach to data. •
www.intelligentcio.com
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