Business Intelligence (BI). In 1989, Howard Dresser proposed BI to describe “concepts and methods to improve business decision making by using fact-based support systems.” Yes, your company needs BI to survive, but now you have to choose between on-premise BI – inflexible, complex – and cloud or SaaS BI – more agile, affordable, accessible. And if you opt for cloud, is it mature or trustworthy enough yet? The experts debate.

Cindi Howson: “Cloud BI promises to make on-premise installations obsolete, much to the fear of traditional IT departments. CIOs love cloud BI; it’s the worker bees that fear it.”

Mico Yuk: “When referring to SaaS BI, Gartner says, ‘Cloud offerings will make up just 3 percent of business intelligence (BI) revenue by 2013, as user adoption will lag far behind the expectations of vendors.’”

Ilan Frank: “Want to dip your toes into cloud BI? Try prototyping your on-premise BI using a cloud BI solution.”