Fundamentals for a Service-based evaluation concept for Business Intelligence in the Cloud

Organizations can achieve many benefits by the integration of Cloud computing approaches in their Business Intelligence (BI) environments. However, the integrated and complex BI architectures make the integration of this new technology difficult. Since the Cloud is no universal remedy, it would be useful to have an evaluation model to decide when the use of Cloud BI is appropriate. This paper constitutes the first steps towards such a model by identifying and structuring consequences of Cloud computing on Service-based BI architectures. For this purpose, a comprehensive literature review and a case study in cooperation with Bayer, a large German company, were conducted. The results are illustrated on the basis of real life scenarios which indicate that an approach that considers the great number of complex interdependencies in BI architectures is required.