The convergence of cloud, automation and collaboration has created a new class of offerings for data driven insights. We take a look at their defining characteristics, featuring analysis from Forrester and commentary from Qubole.

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.

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.

Read the full article on ZDNet