Growth of Cloud BI. The drumbeat of cloud computing began more than a decade ago when Salesforce.com launched one of the first front-office applications to run entirely in the cloud. Its success has spawned a host of imitators in just about every nook and cranny of the business applications market. The rush of cloud-based applications is shifting the gravity of data from on-premises data centers to cloud platforms.  

It appears that 2016 may be the tipping point for cloud computing. This year, many large software vendors got religion about the cloud. Oracle, SAP, Teradata and IBM have joined front-run-ners Amazon, Microsoft and Google to launch cloud platforms that host a variety of their own and third-party applications. These vendors are working with customers of all sizes to help them understand the value of cloud computing and de-velop cloud migration plans.  

Cloud BI. Business intelligence (BI) and data management vendors have not been immune to the allure of the cloud. There are several pure-play cloud BI and data management vendors, and most other BI vendors offer cloud-only prod-ucts or extensions that support hybrid computing environments. Vendors now recognize that many customers want to exploit the advantages of cloud computing—faster deployments, minimal IT involvement, no capital expenditures and elastic computing. And they are investing accordingly.  

For the past six years, the adoption rate for cloud BI has hovered around 30%. Our current re-search shows a significant uptick in cloud BI and data management deployments. This indicates that cloud BI and data management is also nearing a tipping point. As data gravity shifts to the cloud, BI and data management is following suit.

This report tracks adoption of the cloud by companies that have BI and data management programs. It also captures the drivers, benefits and challenges companies face when implementing cloud BI. (Note: this report will refer to BI and data management in the cloud as “cloud BI”).