Information as a Service (IaaS)

What is Information as a Service (IaaS). We have heard of SaaS (Software as a Service), PaS (Product as a Service), what next?

IaaS is not a new concept. We all know about business intelligence Tools (BI tools like Business Objects, Cognos, Informatica, SAS, Teradata or some other software package).

I feel the best way to define IaaS is “exposing BI data through services”. You are increasing the reach of BI systems.

IBM defines IaaS as “Information as a service is an entry point to service oriented architecture (SOA) that offers information access to complex, heterogeneous data sources within your company as reusable services. These services may be available both within the enterprise and across your value chain.”

Source : http://www-01.ibm.com/software/solutions/soa/entrypoints/information.html

Let me give a quick brief of the BI systems we had. Earlier BI tools use to ship with ETL model . ETL (extract, transform and load) processing, data warehouses and data marts, and reporting systems. There was no option available for some one to get the data in any other place then the package components itself.

First The Web : We made little progress in late 90s where we had web browsers and we have portals. Portals offered portlets where there was a flexibility to insert a code snippet and get the BI data in the portals. The portlets offered it with variety of forms like charts, graphs etc. This give sign to developer world that they do not have to log into BI to get the data but they can get it through portlets.

Second the SOA : Next came the SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). This gave the flexibility for the developers world that they don’t have to code for every thing. They can get the data through services

Third Increased Connectivity : Earlier the restriction to SOA model was the connectivity. Although you may have a SOA platform but you still may not be able to use it because of the low connectivity. Now with the latest broadband service and virtual networks data reaches you in no point of time. With this platform the BI data can reach you in no point of time if you expose it as a service.

So what does it means to everyone?

IaaS means that you can deliver BI snippets to variety of applications and users. In other words you will increase the reach of BI.

Reference : http://www.information-management.com/news/1059873-1.html