By now we're all familiar with SaaS, or Software as a Service. It's one of the basic building blocks of an enterprise cloud computing implementation. Are you ready for the next wave? Meet DaaS, Data Warehousing as a Service. Internet Evolution's Sean Gallagher says that at first glance, DaaS sounds like an impossible idea.

Data warehouses and the business intelligence applications built atop them are typically carefully crafted and highly customized, even though the underlying software may be fundamentally similar across enterprises. Companies that manage to create a working data warehouse frequently hold their business analytics close to the vest.

Why send your data warehouse to the cloud?

For many midsized companies, building a data warehouse in-house is a bridge too far, just in terms of the cost of the hardware and software and the prerequisite skills needed to pull it all together. At many small and midsized companies, as a result, 'business intelligence' usually amounts to a Microsoft Excel 'pivot table' with data extracted from a report.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Gallagher notes that many service providers, including Kickfire, Oracle, IBM, and others have services to show off. Especially interesting is Kognitio, which has already been providing DaaS-like services for 13 years. Perhaps now its time has come. -- Don Willmott