There's more and more data being produced and made available in the world today from a variety of sources, some new, some old. That drives demand for analytics capabilities so that people can derive some useful, actionable meaning from all that data — and the demand is too overwhelming for the broken, old model of having to wait for a developer to build the analytics and then have a specialist business analyst crunch the numbers. Every Tom, Dick and Harry wants the answers on a plate, and they want them now. The only way to serve that demand is to make it so easy to extract the data and run the analysis that everyone can self-serve.
Last week, I wrote about the trend towards business intelligence getting absorbed into everyday software applications so that users can have the data visualizations and reporting they need right there where they're working. I cited SuccessFactors' acquisition of YouCalc as one direction the wind is blowing. But I also promised to look at another cross-current, which in today's post is illustrated by GoodData, an independent BI vendor that is offering to embed its dashboard into a range of SaaS applications, rather than being tied to a single one.
GoodData pulls data from applications using REST APIs (or it can be as simple as CSV uploads) and performs analysis on-demand using Amazon-hosted servers. Its Agile BI proposition aims to be as simple to implement as possible, with the ability to add complexity as requirements evolve: "To get started with GoodData, all you need is a username, password and some data to analyze. That's less time than it takes to schedule a demo with the other guys. We believe that the faster you can answer the first question, the more likely you are to ask the second one."
Having started off (as one does) with an embedded dashboard in Salesforce.com, this year GoodData has been extending its reach into other SaaS applications such as helpdesk vendor Zendesk and community support vendor Get Satisfaction. It also has connectors for Google Analytics and a range of other application sources via integration vendors SnapLogic and Pervasive Software.
One of the biggest challenges for BI and analytics vendors is acquiring new customers. Prospects don't appreciate the value of the solution until they see it in action, but the sales and marketing cost of getting to that point is often prohibitive. YouCalc's founder told me last week that being able to bring his solution to SuccessFactors' eight million users was an important consideration in joining the larger vendor.
GoodData is taking a different tack, embedding its dashboard into SaaS partner applications such as Zendesk completely free of charge, in the expectation that a proportion will become customers as a result of starting to use the dashboard and wanting to do more with it. "The best result for us is when someone asks us a question — when they want to engage with us," explained founder and CEO Roman Stanek when we discussed the arrangement earlier this year.
This approach is only economic using an architecture that's multi-tenant and running on pay-for-usage public cloud infrastructure, Stanek explained to me. "The reliability and functionality we get out of Amazon is excellent," he said. "The marginal cost per [Zendesk] customer to all intents and purposes is zero."
Coincidentally, this illustrates the truth of Apprenda CEO Sinclair Schuller's blog post last night that ISVs who aren't using multi-tenancy to deliver cloud applications have a seriously broken business architecture, as the economics of free trials simply don't add up.
If GoodData can make this customer acquisition model work then it will make it more likely that business intelligence can survive as a best-of-breed add-on that runs across multiple applications.
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