I was wondering if you have any guidelines or suggestions for those who try to deploy BI solution on the Cloud. I’m at the very early stage of investigation of the subject and hope to get some advice.
Thanks

C_G

P.S. I posted this question in two places because wasn’t sure where it fits best.

Hi C_George,

I think it all comes down to requirements.  Also, what type of BI Solution do you want to build?

Why do you want to go to the cloud?  What does cloud give you w/r/t business drivers and requirements?

You can always go the EC2 route, but it can be fairly slow.  There are several PaaS vendors emerging, but they’re a little more difficult to get up and going w/r/t BI tools.  The traditional BI Vendors are also playing in the Cloud now.

Thanks,

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

The client needs some stand-alone KPI monitoring system. There are machine-generated data that needs to be processed and analyzed. Then the client needs web-based reporting/dashboard available to them.

One of the requirements is that client would not require internal IT support nor any hardware/software procurement.
What would be your suggestion and why did you say that EC2 route would be slow? and why do you think it is difficult to set up BI on PaaS?

Thanks
C_G

Jeff,

Your last comment about EC2 being fairly slow concerned me little bit. Do you have some experience with that issue before? Can you elaborate bit more on it?
Thanks
C_G

Hi C_George,

Regarding ‘difficult to set up BI on PaaS’, I was referencing specifically the likes of phpcloud and pagodabox.  These php-based techs would work well, but they’re a little young.  At this time, you can’t install any other DB except MySQL.  This limitation puts them at a disadvantage against the traditional BI vendors.  I’d ask any PaaS vendor if you can customize what your data is stored within. 

If you wanted out-of-the-box cloud, then traditional BI vendors (Pentaho, etc.) can be nice.  I’ve not used the traditional vendors on the cloud personally, though.

As for slowness, it’s more of an observation and fact.  I’ve noticed a general slowness w/r/t data speeds.  I’d take a look at the handful of well-known cloud-makers to see which one fits your client the best. 

Cheers,

Jeff

Thanks Jeff,

My Plan is to use Infobright at the center of the architecture and use Pentaho or Jasper for reporting and dashboards (plus ETL tool of course).
So, in general, I don’t plan on using a lot of updates or inserts, mainly ETL - loads.
If you have any knowledge or experience with any of PaaS, I would very much appreciate if you share it with me.
So fare I only explore (just browsing their websites)  Amazon EC2 and Firehost at http://www.firehost.com/secure-hosting/configure, so any help in that matter would be very valuable.
Thanks

C_G

Hi C_G,

You know, I don’t really know who is great Out-of-the-box PaaS vendors.  You can throw something on cloud, but it’s not a point/click/up-and-running option. 

If you’d like, I can get you in touch with some of the developers who may be able to help setup something with Pentaho + Infobright fairly easily.  Otherwise, you may have to just create your own EC2 instance, install everything, and provide the AMI for future customers.

Do you want it to be fairly point-click-and-go (PaaS), or are you okay with some level of installation/setup on the cloud(not PaaS, but flexible)?

The way I was envisioning the process is that I’m getting root access to some PaaS provider and install all the components myself. If you know of the option that I can have point-click-and-go as you describe, than would be really great but I have my doubts .
If you can put me in touch with some developers, it would be also great, but how would it work? Would I have to pay for service?

Thanks
C_George

Hi Jeff,

Was wondering if you have any more tips or suggestions for my scenario?
C_G