Cloud-Based Analytics Shift Gains Momentum

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In the abbreviated version of the precipitation cycle many of us memorized in high school science class, moisture evaporates to forms clouds. Much the same appears to be happening with big data as an up-and-coming business intelligence vendor claims to have uploaded more than 25 petabytes of data to its analytics platform in the cloud.

Domo Inc., among a pack of emerging business intelligence upstarts, proclaimed this week that after one year theirs’ is the largest data analytics platform in the cloud. The roughly 25 petabytes uploaded so far consists of more than 100 trillion rows of data. That, the Utah-based startup claims, is twice the size of the largest data warehouse claimed by SAP (NYSE: SAP) in 2014.

While boasting quantity, the BI specialist also is staking a claim to quality, with connections to more than 1 million “discreet” data sources (we’re pretty sure Domo meant “discrete”).

The BI specialist is betting that data analysts will want to shift from limiting data access as a way of fine-tuning query performance to a cloud-based framework that speeds queries while accessing huge data sets.

Along with uploading massive amounts of data to its business cloud, Domo said it delivered more than 14,000 updates last year as part of its software services.

Domo announced on Thursday (March 23) that it has added L’Oréal (EPA: OR), the world’s largest cosmetics company and third largest advertiser, to its customer list. Seeking to overcome “silos of dead-end reporting,” the French company said it would use Domo’s “digital cockpit” to steer marketing and sales functions “with real-time key performance indicators.”

Domo’s others customers include MasterCard (NYSE: MA), eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) and Schneider Electric (EPA: SU).

Market watchers noted last year that Domo is part of a wave of agile upstarts in the business intelligence and analytics sectors offering less-expensive and capable BI alternatives. Among them are established IT players such as Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Microstrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) along with startup like Alteryx, Birst, Sisense, Gooddata and Zoomdata.

Domo’s cloud surge also illustrates the willingness of more large enterprises to move beyond on-premise firewalls and store more strategic data in the cloud. Indeed, as we have reported, spending for on-premise analytics is actually declining. The trend toward big data analytics in the cloud began to gain traction in 2015, analysts said, as more large IT vendors started offering solutions.

Business intelligence vendors such as Domo have run with the ball and figured out how to scale the amount of data stored in its cloud-based analytics platform.

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