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An integrated set of data management, analytics, and insight application development and management components, offered as a platform the enterprise does not own or control, may sound scary, or cryptic.
Scary or not, that’s the definition of Insight platforms as a service (IPaaS) by Forrester. The scary part has to do with the lack of ownership of control. Many enterprises would be put off, as the need to exercise precisely that is engraved in their DNA.
The move to the cloud however, much debated in its early years, is pretty much a given now. Ownership and control have been central issues there, and yet somehow the pro-cloud arguments have prevailed and the majority of enterprises is now on that camp.
Insight Platforms-As-A-Service was introduced as a term by Forrester
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Pace of innovation, economies of scale, elasticity, and flexibility seem to outweigh ownership and control. Initially applied to infrastructure, the trend soon expanded to applications and platforms. The end result is that by now a big part of enterprise applications and data live in the cloud.
If those are valid reasons for moving to the cloud, then would it not make sense to have the tools needed to get insights from that data in the cloud too? Why move your data back and forth?
The notion of the cloud as an integral part of data-driven analysis has been around for years. What is new however is that now we are not just talking about cloud-based tools, but entire platforms that offer everything in a bundle: from the mechanics of server provisioning and data ingestion to analytics, automation, and collaboration facilities.