Cloud Analytics: Big Data Service Model Research

Cloud Analytics: The promise of business insight from Big Data through quality analytics is now a reality in most businesses. Cloud analytics is a service model in which elements of the data analytics process are provided through a public or private cloud and it has been adopted by a third of the UK Cloud Snapshot Survey 2017 respondents.

Gartner defines the six key elements of analytics as data sources, data models, processing applications, computing power, analytic models and sharing or storage of results. Gartner states that any analytics initiative “in which one or more of these elements is implemented in the cloud” qualifies as cloud analytics. From Oracle to Microsoft Power BI it is clear that the use of cloud analytics will grow larger over the coming year.

Consumerisation of the Enterprise

Part of the consumerisation of the enterprise is the adoption of enterprise grade cloud applications such as Oracle and Salesforce.com. One large change that has been observed over the past year is a growth in consumption of enterprise cloud applications. There has been an increase in both the number of applications moving to the public cloud marketplace as well as increasing the ease of consumption of these enterprise cloud applications. In the past, enterprises needed to open up conversations with the vendors, complete an RFP process and then work through the process to select and deploy an enterprise software solution. Today, an organization can go to a public cloud marketplace and, with just a few clicks, spin up an instance of Microsoft Dynamics, SharePoint or other business applications. Overall 35% of respondents said they were using cloud based enterprise applications, in the Scientific research section this was nearly every company, however, in the insurance sector, it was just 14% of the respondents, this may reflect the more traditional nature of the insurance markets.

Cloud Analytics Management Tools

Managing the public cloud estate, hybrid estate or enterprise applications requires the use of cloud based management tools such as Amazon CloudWatch, CA Unified Infrastructure Management or Cisco CloudCenter (formerly CliQr). Other smaller companies have arrived to provide cloud management services such as Cloud Ranger and Dynatrace. Some of these are very powerful and very easy to adopt. Nearly a quarter (23%) singled out cloud management tools as a key application they use across their platforms as they give them far greater visibility and control over their infrastructure than could be achieved in traditional computing.