Cloud BI: Build from scratch or OEM

October 15, 2014 - Research O222

When providing a complete BI solution to clients, there are many requirements that need to be considered. It is not just enough to code an HTML page that provides the data or an insight; a central warehouse attached to a powerful analytics engine along with an appealing user interface and dashboarding environment is necessary to help customers make sense of all that data. Independent software vendors (ISVs) are always looking for ways to ensure solution success, and when analytics is a driver behind that success, the question of building their own BI solution or buying one becomes a challenging one to answer. Nucleus spoke with several ISVs who had chosen to partner for their cloud BI solution and some who had chosen to build their own. The key reasons that drove their decision to OEM a cloud BI solution were focused around time to market, support and maintenance costs, core competencies, and completeness and effort required to build a complex BI solution.