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