Data and findings in this article are sourced from the Dresner Advisory Services 2018 Cloud Computing and Business Intelligence Market Study (Wisdom of Crowds® series, 7th annual edition), as reported by Louis Columbus on Forbes.com. The full study requires client access.
Cloud BI Adoption Is Accelerating Rapidly
Cloud Business Intelligence (BI) has moved from an emerging trend to a mainstream enterprise priority. According to the Dresner Advisory Services 2018 study, the percentage of organizations actively using Cloud BI nearly doubled from roughly 25% in 2016 to 49% in 2018. Over the same period, the share of respondents reporting no plans to use Cloud BI dropped by half — from 38% to 19%.
The study’s sentiment measure rose from 2.68 to 3.22 (on a scale where 3.0 represents “important”) between 2017 and 2018, reflecting a meaningful shift in how decision-makers perceive Cloud BI within their broader analytics strategies. Asia-Pacific respondents were the strongest global proponents, rating Cloud BI at 4.2 — approaching “very important” — and showing the highest levels of criticality of any region surveyed.
Which Departments Are Leading Cloud BI Adoption?
Sales and Marketing teams are the strongest advocates for Cloud BI, with over 90% of respondents from this group calling it important to getting their work done — the highest of any department surveyed. Executive Management follows closely, driven by growing reliance on cloud-based front-office applications that generate and consume cloud-native data.
Business Intelligence Competency Centers (BICCs) and Sales & Marketing each report over 60% current adoption rates. Operations departments — including manufacturing, supply chain, and services — represent the next tier of current users. Both Marketing and BICC are identified as catalysts behind the surge in adoption between 2016 and 2018, as these teams operate under time-sensitive, revenue-linked goals that demand real-time analytical visibility.
Industry Adoption Rates
Cloud BI adoption is not uniform across industries. The study identifies the following breakdown for 2018:
- Financial Services: 62% adoption — highest weighted mean interest (3.8, approaching “very important”)
- Technology: 54% adoption — half of respondents rate Cloud BI as “critical” or “very important”
- Education: 54% adoption
- Retail & Wholesale: Fourth-highest adoption level; most companies in active evaluation phase; close to 90% rate SaaS/Cloud BI as at least “important”
- Manufacturing & Healthcare: Least likely current or future users — 45% of respondents in these sectors report no plans for Cloud BI
Healthcare remains consistently the industry least open to managed services for data and BI, reflecting persistent concerns around data sensitivity and regulatory compliance.
Of note: 66% of organizations that self-identify as completely successful with their BI initiatives are already using the cloud, suggesting a correlation between cloud adoption and perceived BI program success.
Preferred Cloud BI Providers
When respondents were asked about their preferred cloud infrastructure providers for BI workloads, the rankings were as follows:
- Amazon AWS: Named by 86% of Cloud BI adopters
- Microsoft Azure: Named by 82%
- Google Cloud: Named by 66%
- IBM Bluemix: Named by 36%
AWS and Azure occupy the top two positions by a significant margin, reflecting their broader dominance in enterprise cloud infrastructure at the time of the study.
Most-Required Cloud BI Features in 2018
The study identifies the following as the top Cloud BI feature requirements across all respondents:
- Dashboards — Driven especially by Sales & Marketing needs for real-time goal tracking
- Advanced visualization
- Ad-hoc query
- Data integration
- Self-service analytics
Reporting, data discovery, and end-user data blending form the next tier of importance. Feature priorities vary considerably by industry:
- Manufacturers prioritize dashboards, ad-hoc query, production reporting, search interfaces, location intelligence, and write-back to transactional applications.
- Education respondents show the greatest interest in advanced visualization, data integration, data mining, end-user data blending, data catalogs, and collaborative analysis tools.
- Financial Services respondents lead all industries in self-service BI interest, alongside strong interest in advanced visualization.
- Healthcare respondents lead only in interest in in-memory processing support.
- Retail/Wholesale and Healthcare show the lowest overall feature interest levels.
Cloud Connector and Integration Priorities
Interest in connectors to cloud application platforms — including Salesforce, NetSuite, and similar SaaS systems — increased by 12% in 2018 compared to the prior year. End-to-end visibility across supply chains, manufacturing operations, and distribution networks is increasingly dependent on integrating Cloud BI tools with both cloud-native and on-premises systems.
Industry-specific connector priorities include:
- Retail/Wholesale, Business Services, Education, and Financial Services: Highest interest in Google Analytics connectors
- Technology: Prioritizes Salesforce integration above all others
- Education: Most interested in MySQL and Google Drive integration
- Manufacturing: Most interested in Google AdWords and SurveyMonkey connectors
- Healthcare: Prioritizes SAP Cloud BI services and has notable interest in ServiceNow connectors
Primary Barriers to Adoption
Despite strong growth, Cloud BI adoption still faces headwinds. The study identifies data privacy and security concerns as the primary barriers preventing broader enterprise adoption. This is consistent with industry-wide challenges around migrating sensitive operational and financial data to cloud environments, particularly in regulated industries such as healthcare and financial services.
What to Watch Going Forward
The 2018 Dresner study represents the first year in the seven-year series showing a dramatic single-year spike in Cloud BI adoption. Several trends are worth monitoring as Cloud BI matures:
- Cloud BI integration with operational systems — especially in supply chain and manufacturing — was expected to accelerate, driven by real-time shop floor monitoring use cases.
- As Sales & Marketing and Executive Management roles become more deeply embedded in cloud-native workflows, demand for real-time dashboards and self-service analytics tools will continue to grow.
- The gap between high-adoption industries (Financial Services, Technology) and laggard sectors (Healthcare, Manufacturing) is likely to narrow as security tooling and compliance frameworks for cloud BI mature.
Original analysis by Louis Columbus, enterprise software strategist with expertise in analytics, cloud computing, CPQ, CRM, e-commerce, and ERP. Findings are from the Dresner Advisory Services 2018 Cloud Computing and Business Intelligence Market Study (Wisdom of Crowds® series).