Many of these cloud BI platforms do very similar things – dashboards, charts, reporting, data consolidation. A few however are somewhat different. Datapine is one of the easiest to use and is an extremely productive platform. FICO Analytic Cloud goes well beyond the usual features and include statistics, data mining and optimization – all in the context of a well managed analytical environment. GoodData is one of the most integrated and self-contained environments with masses of functionality. Kognitio supports very fast in-memory processing and is ideal for real-time analytics. There is no ‘best’ solution – it all depends on need, and so no silly charts are included here which rank the products.
1010Data is a complete cloud based data and analytics solution (an Analytics Platform as a Service – APaaS). It uses a columnar database for high speed query, reporting and analytics needs, and provides a number of interfaces for data analysis. The most novel is the ‘Trillion Row Spreadsheet’ which operates in the web browser, and supports data discovery and analytics in a spreadsheet environment.
BellaDati provides reporting, data visualisation and analytics capability with support for maps and other sophisticated charts. Collaboration features strongly and connectors are provided to most data sources.
Bime provides a cloud based BI platform with advanced analytics (including maps and relational analysis), interactive dashboards, powerful custom calculations, big data support, connectors to social data, data warehouse and the ability to embed dashboards into other applications.
Birst is an enterprise class cloud BI solution with extensive reporting, charting and dashboard tools, combined with a sophisticated data management and integration layer. This includes powerful ETL tools and an analytical data warehouse in the cloud
Chartio is a cloud based business intelligence environment that will mainly satisfy the needs of business users. It does come with moderately sophisticated querying and calculation tools, but isn’t a full blown BI environment. Nonetheless it provides and easy-to-use environment that many users will find productive.
Datapine provides a cloud based service which makes the creation of charts, graphs and dashboards straightforward, so that business users can explore their data and display updated KPIs as required. The interface is primarily drag-and-drop, and this simple interface means that 80% of requirements can be met with 20% of the effort. For more complex needs datapine supports the creation of calculations (via the metric builder), and SQL can be used directly if required.
Domo supports reporting, dashboards and charting, and will access most data sources.
FICO Analytic Cloud is one of the most sophisticated analytics platforms, supporting data exploration and visualization, data mining, predictive analytics, statistics, optimization and business rules management.
GoodData cloud BI is a full BI solution with collect, store, combine, analyze and visualize capability. It employs big data storage and HP Vertica for multidimensional analysis.
InfoCaptor is an extremely competent product, capable of addressing many BI, data visualisation and analytics needs at a very modest price. Deployment can either be in-house or on the web, and in either case the interface is web based. This a pragmatic, ‘get-the-job-done’ solution without the surface gloss and high prices charged by other suppliers.
Information Builders offers a cloud deployment of its WebFOCUS BI analytics platform and the iWay integration technologies. This will primarily be of interest to larger organizations.
Jaspersoft for Amazon Web Services supports reporting, dashboards, in-memory analysis, data virtualization, mobile BI, data integration, OLAP server in a multi-tenancy environment. Pay by the hour or annually.
Kognitio is a fast in-memory cloud based analytics platform. This is ideal for real-time analytics and speedy processing of large volumes of data.
Matillion cloud BI facilitates self-service analytics, speedly in-memory analysis, data warehousing, data visuaization, OLAP, report scheduling, mobile support and integration with Office.
Microsoft Power BI provides collaboration and publishing enhancements to the BI facilities built in to the Office suite. The heavy work is done by Excel with extensions such as PowerPivot (for fast in-memory analysis across large data sets) and Power View (for visual data analysis).
Microstrategy Cloud delivers the broad Microstrategy functionality in a cloud platform. Most imaginable data sources are supported including big data, applications (e.g. Salesforce), databases, and cloud based data (e.g. Eloqua, Zendesk etc.). The analytics capability is comprehensive with predictive analytics, statistics and data mining in addition to the usual reporting, charting and dashboards.
Oracle Cloud BI is an enterprise class solution to BI requirements, and will be of particular interest to existing Oracle users. The staging environment will be particularly welcome, particularly as it is missing in so many other products of this nature.
Pentaho can be hosted on various cloud services including AWS and Rackspace, and provides the same broad functionality as on-premise deployments. This includes reporting, dashboards, OLAP, data mining, ETL and other functions that complete the analytics picture.
QlikView is one of the more advanced BI suites with a powerful data integration layer that makes reporting, chating, dashboards and other forms of analytics easier and more powerful. This is an extensible platform where new forms of analysis can be created as required.
RJMetrics provides visualisation, analytics, data consolidation and data warehousing facilities in the cloud. Collaboration features stongly.
Rosslyn Analytics’ Cloud Data Platform – RAPid – provides a rich visualisation, reporting and analytics environment with sophisticated data integration, cleansing and enrichment facilities. It also supports machine learning for predictive models.
SAP Lumira Cloud is aimed at small to medium sized businesses and starts with a free edition for modest needs. Documents can easily be shared and analytics are conducted within the web browser. Supported data sources include SAP HANA, various relational databases, and Microsoft Excel files.
SAS Cloud Analytics provides the broad SAS analytics capability as a service. SAS is one of the most mature analytics platforms and will pretty well do anything an organization might require. Various solutions are also offered as a cloud service.
Slemma is a cloud BI and dashboard software that allows devs and non-devs alike to do ad hoc visual analysis against data. Slemma plugs in directly to the most popular databases (including XMLA data sources), cloud storage and cloud services, and allows to bypass the need for a warehouse. It is easy to create a dashboard by using intuitive drag-and-drop interface or writing and running SQLs to build charts.
Tableau is a very easy-to-use BI platform with good productivity and support for a wide range of data sources.
Targit provides a good all round BI environment with dashboards, analytics, data discovery, mobile support, reporting and the ability to embed BI solutions into production applications.
Spotfire is an extremely versatile and powerful analytics platform with easy-to-use dashboards and reporting tools, in addition to more advanced statistics and data mining analytics.
Zoho Reports is an online reporting and business intelligence service that helps you easily analyze your business data, and create insightful reports & dashboards for informed decision-making. It allows you to create and share powerful reports. The free service limits users (2) and data, and has cut down functionality.