Business Intelligence Buyer's Guide

Amazon to Announce New Analytics Service in Coming Days

Space Needle

According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon Web Services, the cloud-computing arm of the internet giant will announce their entrance into the packed data analytics market later this week. Given the size of the companies that already store their proprietary data within Amazon’s cloud ecosystem, their transition into the analytics market should not come with much difficulty. According to Pringle & Co., the business intelligence market is set to be worth $143 billion in 2016. Boris Evelson, an analyst at research firm Forrester explains: “This will be the new 800-pound gorilla in the [business intelligence] market.”

The new analytics service, code named Space Needle could help Amazon lock-in Amazon Web Service customers more tightly by storing more of their data within the platform. In addition, Space Needle could also help to broaden Amazon’s customer base to those in IT, and more specifically non-technical business managers.

The new service is expected to include a faster method for moving data to Amazon Web Services. Amazon expects to charge a monthly subscription fee, and in cases where the amount of data that needs to be copied would take a prohibitive amount of time to move via an internet connection, Amazon would supply a storage device that customers could send back filled with the data.

Amazon’s move to offer data analytics may seem obvious, and given their current domination of the cloud market, an entry into the business intelligence space seems only logical. However, it will not be an easy task given the competition that already exists in the analytics industry. The enterprise analytics market is quite crowded already, and with really good tools, those that include Tableau, Birst, Alteryx, Domo and others. However, a successful entrance is not impossible given the relative immaturity of the field. According to Evelson, spreadsheets are still used for half of all business reporting, and only 40 percent of the available data typically is tapped for decision making. Many executives are still unhappy with big data initiatives, one study found, so the window remains open for Amazon to make some noise.

It will be very interesting to see how Amazon frames their announcement, but moving forward, it will be even more interesting to see how they will attract business users who don’t yet have data stored within Amazon’s cloud environment.

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