Business Intelligence on Cloud

Business Intelligence on high-end hardware like HP Proliant servers is a well known business scenario / setup / practiced pattern. But business intelligence on cloud is not even a common thought. On my previous post, one of my blog readers commented a query "whether I have used SSIS as a data source for SSRS where SSRS applications runs in a cloud ?" I thought I would blog about it so that I can share my thoughts with everyone.

To the best of my knowledge any BI related services like SSIS / SSRS / SSAS does not exist on the cloud as of now. Presently SQL Azure can be used as a light weight storage for some of the BI related requirements. Some of the examples of a probable use for the same are as below:

1) Many a times either a temporary staging or a permanent staging is required in ETL solutions. Also the use of that kind of staging is volatile. SQL Azure can be one of the best options for this requirements.

2) Many enterprise level applications are used and implemented across geographical areas. Often these applications need replication and synchronization of data. Effectively in-premise version of SQL Server i.e. federated database servers need synchronization. SQL Azure can be used as a server for facilitating standard or customized synchronization of database servers.

3) To answer the query of my blog reader, SSIS can still be used as a data source for SSRS applications. SSRS cannot run on the cloud as this service is not available yet. But data can be stored on SQL Azure, accessed from SSIS package which can be used as a data source for SSRS reports. SSRS can also access data from SQL Azure, and one might want to use SSIS where there are multiple relational and/or non-relational data sources involved to create a dataset.

The pace with which the feature set in SQL Azure is getting healthy, it seems very much probable that business intelligence stack avilability on the cloud does not seems too far. My articles on SQL Azure can be read from here.