Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 43 | Page 29

Q + A + Q + A + Q + A + Q + A + Q + A + Q + A + Q + A + 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 tailormade 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 multi-cloud – in which personalisation is everything – it’s critical that businesses are 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 INTELLIGENTCIO 29