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SaaS, which stands for Software-as-a-Service, is a software licencing model. Under this model, a 3rd party provider gives access to software applications located on the external servers to customers via a web browser on mobile or desktop.
There are Software-as-a-Service apps for human resource management and other fundamental business technologies.
SaaS is one of the 3 primary segments of cloud computing. Other two being IaaS (infrastructure as a service) and PaaS (Platform as a service).
What is Business-to-Business? Business-to-Business (B2B) is a kind of transaction between businesses. It refers to the business transaction between two businesses as against between business and individuals. Most of the transactions in the wholesale market are examples of the B2B market. As the transactions are between two businesses, the transactions values are relatively large compared to transactions with customers. The companies engaged in this type of commerce mostly include business supply firms. A B2B business can include B2B marketing firms, SaaS products, enterprise management services, software solutions, manufacturing equipment suppliers, industrial goods suppliers, payroll processors etc. So, if an enterprise is selling products and services to other enterprises it is B2B transaction, such as accounting software, billing software, coffee machine. Some of the examples of B2B companies are WeWork, Dropbox, ResMed, CleanAir, SalesForce, Buffer, ServiceNow, Slack. B2B and internet Business-to-Business products and services have also transitioned over to internet and cloud. Software-as-a-Service businesses are increasingly popular now, and the B2B market has a significant presence over the internet. Online service delivery has become a new normal driven by accessibility to high-speed data, technology and infrastructure. With mobile penetration at highest level it has ever been, the use of the internet in commerce has grown leaps and bounds. Web development is a great example of B2B players enabling e-commerce market to grow. They develop a website and mobile phone applications of businesses to take the business online and grow customer base, drive user experience and satisfaction. How B2B is different from B2C? B2B business models require different marketing, sales channels, terms and conditions. The target market of B2B companies is not a consumer but another company. The interaction with a customer is direct, and customer touchpoints greater than B2C businesses. B2B business interacts with customers, understanding business processes and needs of the customer are very important to drive sales. They are required to build trust and relationship with the customer and develop tailored solutions. The marketing campaigns of B2B business are extensively planned to target the specific needs of other businesses, and dedicated sales function, account management and relationship functions are established to cater to evolving demands. Although methods of marketing can be similar to B2C business, branding and customer interaction are completely different. B2C companies engage in driving consumer’s desire to use the product or service, while B2B companies pitch top decision-makers of the customer organisation to deliver products and services that deliver a return on investment (ROI) for the customer. While B2C companies have to improve brand awareness, networking, social reach, consumer experience and journey. B2B companies require knowledge and well-trained sales professionals that are capable of understanding business need in a dynamic business environment. The essence of B2B marketing is to reflect ways to drive bottom-line numbers of customers. B2B companies take considerable time to complete a sale, which may take weeks and months, while purchases in the B2C market are instant and only take minutes to hours. Moreover, the decision-making process in purchasing a product or service is longer in the B2B market. Even a B2C business engages in B2B activities, for instance a tyre manufacturer will directly sell to regular retail customers- part of B2C business, at the same time tyre companies engage with OEMs to develop tires for their vehicles, and the development starts much earlier than the vehicle is actually rolled out to the general public. Some examples of B2B companies Alibaba Although Alibaba has multiple businesses under its belt now, it operates a sizeable B2B marketplace for suppliers, small-medium enterprise, buyers, importers, exporters. This B2B marketplace also expands across the world, connecting buyers and seller internationally. Now the company is a significant player in the digital world of the second-largest economy. Kellysearch Kellysearch is among the largest B2B marketplace in the Americas and Europe. It connects sellers and buyers of products across the world and has been a popular procurement marketplace for global buyers. Kellysearch provides a marketplace for telecommunications, jewellery, manufacturing, energy, electronics, design, aviation, healthcare, transport, tourism and much more. ThomasNet Specifically, an industrial B2B market, it connects US suppliers to buyers from across the world through an advanced online B2B platform. ThomasNet has a broad range of industrial goods and services, including raw material, equipment, machinery, supplies, chemicals, mechanical parts. IndiaMart IndiaMart is a large player in the Indian B2B marketplace providers. It is spread across the world and connects B2B companies across nations. IndiaMart is similar to what Alibaba is to Chinese sellers and hosts several suppliers from India. FashionTIY FashionTIY specialises in consumers goods such as apparel, cosmetics, jewellery, bags, wedding, home products etc. It connects small & medium scale wholesalers, retailers and provides end-to-end procurement services. Its services include packaging, delivery, inspection, real-time tracking of goods. AutoGlobalTrade AutoGlobalTrade is a B2B marketplace operating across nations based in Switzerland. It specialises in the automobile trading and connects B2B players. AutoGlobalTrade majorly operates in Asia, Europe and the Americas and is a leading trader of Ford, GMC, Lincoln, Chevrolet. It leverages a multilingual sales team to connect suppliers and buyers across nations. ServiceNow Inc. ServiceNow Inc. is a US-based company that develops workflow enterprise systems for companies. Its cloud-based offering designates ServiceNow as a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) player catering to large multinational corporations from across the world. It generally provides services such as helpdesk management, incident management, problem troubleshooting, IT service management. FedEx FedEx is a logistics company, handling significant supply chains across most of part of the world serving B2B market players as well as B2C market. It is known for its overnight delivery service, and consignment can be tracked on a real-time basis. FedEx also offers freight, logistics, custom, cross border, air & ocean cargo services. SAP SE SAP SE is a German enterprise software solutions company catering to business across the world. It develops software to manage business operations. It serves various industries, including consumer industries, financial services, public services, discrete industry, service industry. SAP’s financial accounting software was the first commercial product, which is very popular across the world.
Cloud computing is the distribution of a range of computing services via the internet. The computing services include servers, storage, databases, networking, software, and analytics, among others. Cloud computing is an extremely popular and widely used technology. Some of the major players in the industry include Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM Cloud. The best part of using cloud computing services is that it is helpful in reducing the operating cost. At the same time, it is swift, provides flexible resources and offers the advantage of economies of scale. Cloud Computing What is Cloud Computing? Cloud computing is the distribution of a range of computing services via the internet. The computing services include servers, storage, databases, networking, software, and analytics, among others. Cloud computing is an extremely popular and widely used technology. Some of the major players in the industry include Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM Cloud. The best part of using cloud computing services is that it is helpful in reducing the operating cost. At the same time, it is swift, provides flexible resources and offers the advantage of economies of scale. As highlighted in the image above, through cloud computing, it is possible to read a newspaper, do net banking, read books, save files and many more. After having some idea about cloud computing, let us also understand some of the benefits of cloud computing. GOOD READ: 3 Stocks to Leverage the Cloud Computing Boom in 2020 What are the Benefits of Cloud Computing? Cloud computing can be considered as a significant transition from the traditional working style. Below are some of the reasons why most companies are switching to the cloud. Reduces Operating Cost: One of the major advantages of cloud computing is that it saves a lot of money. People do not have to worry about purchasing hardware to save any file. Different software is also available through the cloud. Thus, it reduces additional cost purchasing software. Cloud Computing is highly elastic: Probably the biggest advantage of cloud computing is its elasticity. In essence, it means providing the required computing power, storage, and bandwidth at any point of time from any geographical location. Supports Business Continuity: Cloud computing has a critical role to play at the time of any disaster. For any business, protecting data and system is critical during a BCP (business continuity plan) situation. Whatever be the situation, with cloud computing, one can be sure that their data are safe and secure. Supports Collaboration Within Organization: When the resources are available on the cloud, the employee would be able to access the files, communicate with each other, even while sitting at different corners of the world. Automatic Updates: Users of cloud computing services usually receive automatic updates related to the software. In case one has a software on one’s device connected to the cloud, and there is an update on the software, one would also be eligible for automatic software upgrade depending on the software fees. Security: Various cloud providers are offering a set of policies, technologies, and controls capable of strengthening the security of your data, files, applications, plus an infrastructure to safeguard from external threat. How Many Types of Cloud Computing are there? There are different types of clouds catering to varying needs of the end-users. There are several models, solutions, types, and services that have grown with time and that match the specific needs of the user. Let us discuss the three types of cloud computing. Public Cloud: Public clouds are owned and controlled by third-party cloud service players. These providers offer services like servers and storage over the internet. An example of Public cloud is Microsoft Azure. With the public cloud, the entire hardware, software, and other supporting infrastructure are owned by the cloud provider. The services on the public cloud can be accessed via a web browser. Private Cloud: In a private cloud, the resources on the cloud can be accessed entirely by a single company. This private cloud could be situated on the company’s on-site data center. In some cases, these companies provide third-party service providers to manage their private cloud. Hybrid Cloud: Hybrid cloud, as the name indicates, is the amalgamation of both the private and public cloud. In Hybrid cloud, the two are bound together via a technology that enables data and applications to be shared. With data free to move between the two clouds, there exists more flexibility within the business and more deployment options, thus, helping to optimize the prevailing infrastructure, security, and compliance. What are the different types of Cloud Computing Models? Cloud computing has three types of models. Each model signifies a different component of the cloud computing stack. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Infrastructure as a Service comprises of the basic building blocks for cloud IT, and it gives access to network features, computer, and data storage spaces. This cloud model provides its user with the highest level of elasticity and management control over the IT resources. Platform as a Service (PaaS): Platform as a Service model eliminates the need for a company to manage the underlying infrastructure. It supports its users to concentrate on the implementation as well as the management of their applications. The advantage of using this model is that the user need not have to think about purchasing any resource, capacity planning, software maintenance that is needed to run the application. Software as a Service (SaaS): Software as a service model gives the user a complete product that is operated and managed by the service provider. In most cases, people refer to SaaS as an end-user application. Through this SaaS model, the user gets relieved from the tension of maintaining the service and management of underlying infrastructure. The SaaS user only has to think about different ways to use a particular application. An example of SaaS is an email one sends to another person without worrying about how the application is operating at the back-end. Cloud Computing Outlook Cloud computing has massive scope for the future. Its role was significant during the pandemic when most people switched to remote working. Market experts believe that cloud computing will grow at a considerable pace. According to some research reports, the cloud computing market is expected to grow at a CAGR in the late teens and exceed US$800 million in size by 2025. Existing Market Dynamics: Improved return on investment at a lower infrastructure and storage cost. Existing requirement to handle regulatory and compliance policy needs. Increase in the adoption of hybrid cloud service. Cloud computing experiences challenges of cyber-attacks impacting businesses. INTERESTING READ: 5G, Cloud Computing, Bundling – the three pieces of pie in Australian Telecom Uses of Cloud Computing Most things have gone online in the present times, and people are using online mode to watch movies, play games, listen to music, and many more. This is possible because of cloud computing. From the smallest companies to the biggest in the world, all are utilizing this technology for several purposes. In this section, we would look at a couple of applications of cloud computing. Cloud is used for building, deploying, and scaling applications at a faster rate. Cloud is used to reduce the application cost and time via cloud infrastructures that can be easily scaled up or down as per the requirement. Through cloud computing, a user can protect data in a cost-effective way and on a massive scale. It also transfers the data to an offsite cloud storage system that can be assessed from any place and device. Cloud is used for consolidating data across teams, units, and locations. Different people can then assess these data to uncover insights for more informed decisions. Cloud computing is used to connect people from any location, at any time and any device with high-definition audio and video features with global distribution. Users use intelligent models to engage clients and offer them valuable understandings from the data taken. We often get software update notifications. Cloud computing provides users with software updates providing the latest versions and updates as per their requirement. Drawbacks of Cloud Computing So far, we have seen the features and benefits of cloud computing. But at the same time, we cannot ignore that it has its drawbacks. Let us look at some of them. One of the biggest disadvantages of the technology is the risk of data confidentiality as multiple people can access the data. Cloud computing works when there is an internet connection. In the absence of the internet, or if the internet path to the cloud has some disturbance, access to cloud computing machine would be complicated. As everyone can access the public cloud, there is a probability of data getting hacked. Data being highly confidential, businesses cannot afford any leakage of sensitive data. When we store data on the cloud, we depend on a third party to take care of our data. We become dependent on the data center of the provider. In case someone experiences some technical challenges, he/she has no option to rectify from their end. Instead, they have to connect with the hosted provider’s technical support team for help. Cloud computing technology does not work well in case the connection is low. Every cloud provider differs from one another. Hence, it may be possible that the users may not get the same features. Some providers offer limited versions and allow the most popular features only, while some do not provide features and customization as per the user’s demand. As highlighted in the image above, through cloud computing, it is possible to read a newspaper, do net banking, read books, save files and many more. After having some idea about cloud computing, let us also understand some of the benefits of cloud computing. GOOD READ: 3 Stocks to Leverage the Cloud Computing Boom in 2020 What are the Benefits of Cloud Computing? Cloud computing can be considered as a significant transition from the traditional working style. Below are some of the reasons why most companies are switching to the cloud. Reduces Operating Cost: One of the major advantages of cloud computing is that it saves a lot of money. People do not have to worry about purchasing hardware to save any file. Different software is also available through the cloud. Thus, it reduces additional cost purchasing software. Cloud Computing is highly elastic: Probably the biggest advantage of cloud computing is its elasticity. In essence, it means providing the required computing power, storage, and bandwidth at any point of time from any geographical location. Supports Business Continuity: Cloud computing has a critical role to play at the time of any disaster. For any business, protecting data and system is critical during a BCP (business continuity plan) situation. Whatever be the situation, with cloud computing, one can be sure that their data are safe and secure. Supports Collaboration Within Organization: When the resources are available on the cloud, the employee would be able to access the files, communicate with each other, even while sitting at different corners of the world. Automatic Updates: Users of cloud computing services usually receive automatic updates related to the software. In case one has a software on one’s device connected to the cloud, and there is an update on the software, one would also be eligible for automatic software upgrade depending on the software fees. Security: Various cloud providers are offering a set of policies, technologies, and controls capable of strengthening the security of your data, files, applications, plus an infrastructure to safeguard from external threat. How Many Types of Cloud Computing are there? There are different types of clouds catering to varying needs of the end-users. There are several models, solutions, types, and services that have grown with time and that match the specific needs of the user. Let us discuss the three types of cloud computing. Public Cloud: Public clouds are owned and controlled by third-party cloud service players. These providers offer services like servers and storage over the internet. An example of Public cloud is Microsoft Azure. With the public cloud, the entire hardware, software, and other supporting infrastructure are owned by the cloud provider. The services on the public cloud can be accessed via a web browser. Private Cloud: In a private cloud, the resources on the cloud can be accessed entirely by a single company. This private cloud could be situated on the company’s on-site data center. In some cases, these companies provide third-party service providers to manage their private cloud. Hybrid Cloud: Hybrid cloud, as the name indicates, is the amalgamation of both the private and public cloud. In Hybrid cloud, the two are bound together via a technology that enables data and applications to be shared. With data free to move between the two clouds, there exists more flexibility within the business and more deployment options, thus, helping to optimize the prevailing infrastructure, security, and compliance. What are the different types of Cloud Computing Models? Cloud computing has three types of models. Each model signifies a different component of the cloud computing stack. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Infrastructure as a Service comprises of the basic building blocks for cloud IT, and it gives access to network features, computer, and data storage spaces. This cloud model provides its user with the highest level of elasticity and management control over the IT resources. Platform as a Service (PaaS): Platform as a Service model eliminates the need for a company to manage the underlying infrastructure. It supports its users to concentrate on the implementation as well as the management of their applications. The advantage of using this model is that the user need not have to think about purchasing any resource, capacity planning, software maintenance that is needed to run the application. Software as a Service (SaaS): Software as a service model gives the user a complete product that is operated and managed by the service provider. In most cases, people refer to SaaS as an end-user application. Through this SaaS model, the user gets relieved from the tension of maintaining the service and management of underlying infrastructure. The SaaS user only has to think about different ways to use a particular application. An example of SaaS is an email one sends to another person without worrying about how the application is operating at the back-end. Cloud Computing Outlook Cloud computing has massive scope for the future. Its role was significant during the pandemic when most people switched to remote working. Market experts believe that cloud computing will grow at a considerable pace. According to some research reports, the cloud computing market is expected to grow at a CAGR in the late teens and exceed US$800 million in size by 2025. Existing Market Dynamics: Improved return on investment at a lower infrastructure and storage cost. Existing requirement to handle regulatory and compliance policy needs. Increase in the adoption of hybrid cloud service. Cloud computing experiences challenges of cyber-attacks impacting businesses. INTERESTING READ: 5G, Cloud Computing, Bundling – the three pieces of pie in Australian Telecom Uses of Cloud Computing Most things have gone online in the present times, and people are using online mode to watch movies, play games, listen to music, and many more. This is possible because of cloud computing. From the smallest companies to the biggest in the world, all are utilizing this technology for several purposes. In this section, we would look at a couple of applications of cloud computing. Cloud is used for building, deploying, and scaling applications at a faster rate. Cloud is used to reduce the application cost and time via cloud infrastructures that can be easily scaled up or down as per the requirement. Through cloud computing, a user can protect data in a cost-effective way and on a massive scale. It also transfers the data to an offsite cloud storage system that can be assessed from any place and device. Cloud is used for consolidating data across teams, units, and locations. Different people can then assess these data to uncover insights for more informed decisions. Cloud computing is used to connect people from any location, at any time and any device with high-definition audio and video features with global distribution. Users use intelligent models to engage clients and offer them valuable understandings from the data taken. We often get software update notifications. Cloud computing provides users with software updates providing the latest versions and updates as per their requirement. Drawbacks of Cloud Computing So far, we have seen the features and benefits of cloud computing. But at the same time, we cannot ignore that it has its drawbacks. Let us look at some of them. One of the biggest disadvantages of the technology is the risk of data confidentiality as multiple people can access the data. Cloud computing works when there is an internet connection. In the absence of the internet, or if the internet path to the cloud has some disturbance, access to cloud computing machine would be complicated. As everyone can access the public cloud, there is a probability of data getting hacked. Data being highly confidential, businesses cannot afford any leakage of sensitive data. When we store data on the cloud, we depend on a third party to take care of our data. We become dependent on the data center of the provider. In case someone experiences some technical challenges, he/she has no option to rectify from their end. Instead, they have to connect with the hosted provider’s technical support team for help. Cloud computing technology does not work well in case the connection is low. Every cloud provider differs from one another. Hence, it may be possible that the users may not get the same features. Some providers offer limited versions and allow the most popular features only, while some do not provide features and customization as per the user’s demand.
What is a Data Center? A data center is a building, or a self-contained unit within a building, which is used by organizations to shelter computer equipment like servers, associated components like telecommunications, storage system and network. A data center design is based on the network of computing and storage resources that enable the delivery of shared applications and data. A data center has assured power supply with high bandwidth connectivity. Resilience is crucial, so redundancy of network, power and other infrastructures is common in maintaining continuity. It also has building management controls that are necessary to ensure that the facility and the data in the facility remain safe. These management controls comprise an air conditioner to maintain a certain level of temperature and humidity within the premises, and various security measures to protect the data. What is a modern data center? The data centers that existed earlier were quite different from the ones that exist at present. We can now see that the infrastructure has shifted from on-premises physical server to a virtual network. These virtual networks provide applications and workloads across various physical infrastructure plus the multicloud environment. These days, the data is connected across several data centers, both public and private cloud, and the edge. The role of a data center here is to initiate communication within these multiple data centers in the cloud and on-premises. The cloud is said to be a collection of data centers. It is because when an application is put on the cloud, they use the data center resources from the cloud provider. What is the importance of a data center to businesses? Data centers, in present times, are highly critical and are designed to support business applications and activities that comprise: Sharing of email and file. Productivity applications. Customer relationship management. Enterprise resource planning and databases. Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and big data. Virtual desktops, communications, and collaboration services. Also Learn About: Data analytics and Data Mining. What are the Main Parts of a Data Center? The design of data centers usually differs based on the cloud providers offerings or the requirement of the particular organization. In general, a data center includes infrastructures such as routers, switches, firewalls, storage systems, servers, and application delivery controllers that work together to support the business and also provide access to applications and distribute workload across various machines. This allows an efficient and smooth operation. Overall, the data center infrastructures provide users with: Network infrastructure to connect end-users with the data center, services, storage plus the external connectivity. A storage infrastructure which can be used for storing and managing data that is needed for daily operational work. Server process, memory space, local storage, plus network connectivity that drives business applications. How does a data center operate? Data centers are built to safeguard the performance and integrity of the core data center parts. These include: Network security appliances: Network security appliances comprise of firewall and intrusion protection that is important for protecting the data center. Application delivery assurance: To maintain the performance of an application, the mechanism offers application resiliency plus accessibility via load balancing and automatic failover. What are the main categories of data centers? Broadly, there are four types of data centers. These include Hyperscale, Colocation, Cloud and Managed services data centers. Let us know them individually. Hyperscale Data Center: Hyperscale Data Center is also known as Enterprise Hyperscale. It is a facility owned by the Company it supports and is optimized for their end-users. Some of these companies include AWS, Microsoft, Apple, and Google. These data centers provide strong, scalable applications plus storage services to businesses as well as individuals. Hyperscale computing is essential for big data and cloud storage. Colocation Data Center: In a Colocation Data Center, the Company rents a space within a data center owned by others, and the data center is not within the office premises. Colocation Data Center comprises of one data center owner who sells space, power, and cooling to different businesses in a particular region. Colocation Data Center provides interconnection to SaaS like Salesforce and PaaS like Azure. These data centers help businesses to level up and grow them at a lower cost. Cloud Data Center: A cloud data center is not a physical data center which is located within the office premises but is an online data center. When data is being stored on cloud servers, it automatically gets fragmented and duplicated across different locations for secure storage. In case of any failure, the cloud service provider ensures the backup of all the data. The cloud data services have a huge advantage over the traditional data centers, as they save a lot of financial resources because they do not require setting up of infrastructure. Managed Services Data Center: As the name suggests, these data centers are managed by a third party on behalf of the Company. Instead of buying the pieces of equipment or the resources to set up a data center, the companies lease them. The demand for data centers has been on the rise across several countries with Australia being one of them. To know more, click here.
What is Business Intelligence? Business Intelligence (BI) is a technology-driven process to analyze data and provide actionable data to the management or people involved in decision making to take required steps. In the process of business intelligence, the companies collect data via internal as well as external sources. Then they prepare it for analysis, run queries and prepare data visualization, dashboards and reports for strategic planning and decision making on an operational front. What is the goal of business intelligence? The primary goal of business intelligence is to give the user the right performance information at an appropriate time using the right technology to make better decisions. The data available these days is enormous. Using business intelligence and performance dashboards, one can derive meaningful outcome from these data, which is beneficial while taking any business-related decisions. To achieve this goal, companies use various analytical tools, data management and reporting tools and several ways to deal and study data. How does the process of business intelligence work? The process of business intelligence follows mainly three steps. Collecting data and arranging it via reporting. Analyzing data Decision making. Collecting data and arranging it via reporting: The data refers to the raw data which the companies collect based on the day to day activities, product feedback, customer interaction, human resource management, operations, finance, marketing activities and many more. The data is stored in a data warehouse or the Company’s database. Analyzing data: Data analysis involves the processing of data to get a meaningful outcome. The user provides a command to contextualize the data and make it more meaningful and beneficial in achieving a business's strategic goals. Decision making: In most cases, BI projects fail because of the absence of strategic focus instead of faulty implementation. Business intelligence should be such that it allows the Company to lift the business to attain its strategic goal. Hence BI has a critical role to play along with the management’s final decision to achieve the Company’s mission and vision. What are the BI process steps for success? To have a successful BI implementation, one should keep in mind a couple of points. Focus on the business problem before looking into the data. By doing so, you would be able to identify which data is relevant to the business problem. Define the requirement, objective, and scope of the business problem. The next step involves the stakeholder analysis and the data source. All stakeholders must be mobilized to ensure successful BI implementation. If this is not done and there is no commitment from the top management, BI could be a failure. Next comes the selection of the ideal BI tools. The user involved in the process must choose such BI tools that offer project customization possibilities and simple user experience. An essential step in the process is selecting the team that would carry out the process, as these people would be involved in validating the actions and certifying efficiency. Focus on the key performance indicators (KPI) as it shows the most important data for the business. What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of BI? Advantages: In present times, business intelligence has moved to the mobile platform, making it easy for the users to have the accessibility to the data at any point of time from any locations. It is possible because of the availability of BI tools on the cloud. Compared to the past when business intelligence reports were related only to report creation and spreadsheets, BI has become quite interactive with the upgradation of technology. It is possible to manage big data in real-time. The users now have access to the most recent and updated data. Through BI, it is possible to track a business’s KPIs and check whether they are met or not. Data visualization using BI tools can be carried out at a faster rate. Instead of comparing and contrasting figures on spreadsheets, users can look at the different data and figure out the actionable items. BI makes it easy for the users to understand the KPIs. It helps to improve productivity by supporting appropriate information. Disadvantage: Though BI has made it possible to get more informed and efficient data, it may be possible that different users may have different conclusions from the same data. As data is collected from various sources, the biggest challenge here is related to data security. If the user uses mobile BI applications, then there is a possibility of getting personal data hacked. Another disadvantage of BI tools is that they are expensive. Hence it could be a challenge for a smaller firm to afford it. As there is abundant data available these days, the users may fetch those data which are irrelevant for them. In case there are irrelevant data, it may consume considerable time to get it resolved. Applications of Business Intelligence Business Intelligence has wide-scale applications. Some of the used cases where it is implemented include: Supervising business performance. Assist in decision making and making strategy. Assessing and improving the business processes. Detection of the trend, pattern, and the relationship between the various data points. Provide the key stakeholders with relevant data related to the customer, supply chain and various other business-related elements. In the finance industry, BI plays an essential role in assessing the risk of different financial products offered to the customers. Some Popular BI tools QlikView IBM Cognos Analytics Looker Ad hoc analysis Online analytical processing Mobile BI Real-time BI Operational intelligence SaaS BI Open Source BI Embedded BI