4. Reduced Maintenance of Hardware/Software
On-premise infrastructure for business intelligence includes data warehouse appliances, BI servers, and human resources to manage and maintain hardware. For some organizations it may be more cost-efficient to outsource these tasks to an IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) or PaaS (platform-as-a-service) cloud provider so they can run large-scale data analysis for a fraction of the cost it would take to house and maintain the necessary physical and human resources internally. Choosing a cloud BI model where infrastructure is the cloud provider's responsibility is more affordable (cost- and time-wise) since the need to configure, optimize and update hardware and software is handled externally.
As time goes on, trust in cloud computing grows and more businesses seek an agile infrastructure, the number of companies with cloud components in their BI stack is certain to rise. Cloud BI makes it possible for smaller organizations to get into the business intelligence game – companies that don't need all the bells and whistles of fully customizable platforms or don't have an IT staff that can maintain in-house BI. I for one am firmly in favor of anything that makes analytics more prevalent.