5 Benefits of using a serverless no-code BI tool for end-user analytics
In a business climate demanding the most from their BI tools for end-user analytics, modern serverless solutions deliver. From coding bootcamps to grocery delivery, dashboards created at the click of a button, accessed entirely online, are driving products to new heights.
Having access to securable highly available reports quickly and at low cost provides a significant advantage for any team. Cutting time to insight for large projects from months to days drives growth and innovation while cutting costs. The right tool can reduce costs by up to 20 percent.
This does not mean you lose the stunning visual capabilities once relegated to hybrid or higher cost cloud solutions either. A simple examination of Double Cloud’s simplified user interface, charts, and SQL capabilities reveals why.
Pain points of existing analytics tools
Many tools promise the same power as completely modern fully-managed and fully serverless analytics solutions. They offer many of the same features as well.
Even so, today’s popular tools cost time and money to implement. They often require infrastructure support beyond database connections. Engineers build complex pipelines to ingest data. Sharing means pushing individual reports, charts, and graphs to a separate platform.
|
Feature |
Tableau |
PowerBI |
Serverless DoubleCloud |
|
Has embedded dashboards |
Through complex webhooks and an API |
Through a paid online subscription |
Included |
|
Users can share visuals |
Through a paid cloud or server-based add on |
Through a paid online subscription or manually |
Automatically shared to users given access rights to the data |
|
Scales to meet the demand of large datasets and userbases |
Requires a subscription and Tableau Server requires additional hardware |
Requires PowerBI Premium |
Auto-scales out of the box without paid subscriptions |
|
Store and Query Large datasets |
Storage is separate |
Storage is Separate |
Included through ClickHouse |
|
Aggregates data from streaming sources such as Apache Kafka |
Limited support through third party drivers |
Limited support through third party drivers |
Included through ClickHouse |
|
Access data from common databases such as Redshift and MySQL |
Included |
Included |
Included |
|
Access files stored in the cloud |
Included |
Included |
Included |
|
Pay per Use |
No. Payment is per user |
No. Payment is per user |
Yes. When a cluster is stopped, you are only charged for storage. |
Relying on such outdated platforms leads to a complicated and stressful infinite loop where analysts are trapped in the middle between management, where dashboards drive business initiatives, and data engineers. Organizations suffer from delays and compromises.
There is little wonder as to why Microsoft Excel remains entrenched at 100 percent of businesses. Today’s market leaders are simply not as embraced as their boosters claim.
Not only do non-serverless solutions create a complex feedback loop, they also come with a hefty price tag. Licenses for paid reporting platforms average $3000 per year per seat. That is before considering the add-ons required to achieve parity with applications such as DoubleCloud.
What a serverless BI tool should be
Whether performing predictive or diagnostic analytics, modern analytics applications continue to conquer the gulf between stunning visuals and your data. Cost-effective and responsive embedded dashboards within internal and externally facing applications working on large and real-time datasets are now a reality.
Serverless bi tools can be:
- Cost-effective
- Scalable to work on large datasets or handle large numbers of users
- Agile
- Faster to develop
- Highly Secure
Software, especially serverless software, does not need to be a four letter word. Your team can quench the thirst for knowledge while reducing the infinite loop to a simple cycle, realizing benefits that drive products and services to their full potential.
When using the right serverless tool, you have the power to turn pressure from above into action without being bogged down waiting for pipelines, infrastructure, or account requests. Tools such as Double Cloud even place your database and reporting capabilities within the same ecosystem.
1. Cost effective
Paying per user or paying for a server instance leaves money on the table when resources go unused. Your contracts and hardware lock you into a set of resources.
Serverless instances, whether run on a virtual EC2 instance or fully managed, eliminate the extra cost. You pay for what you use and nothing more.
With the ability to aggregate data from anywhere quickly, truly serverless analytics tools also have the advantage of reducing complexity. Data engineers focus on mastering vital data while analysts deal directly with data that matters.
This eliminates additional pipelines and resources that would otherwise be required to simply route data to dashboards, further reducing costs. As a result, the overall return on investment for a serverless deployment reaches as high as 409 percent over five years.
2. Scalable
There is an additional factor that helps fine tune costs while growing or shrinking to meet demand. Many serverless dashboard applications auto-scale. Storage and compute power change dynamically without human intervention to keep reports running smoothly.
Large datasets and user demand do not need to slow down your reports. Latency becomes a thing of the past, giving you up to date results and eliminating yet another leg of the infinite loop.
When resources are no longer needed, your applications spool down resources based on preset guidelines. This gives you the ability to reduce cost while ensuring that unanticipated spikes in resource use are accounted for.
3. Faster to develop
Cost savings are just one of the benefits of a serverless deployment. As analysts no longer need to rely as heavily on data engineers and the support of infrastructure specialists, the time to develop dashboards shrinks drastically.
Instant aggregation and ingestion means that, in an ideal world, the only tickets you file with engineers are to fix and acquire more data. Infrastructure at the click of a button makes access to tools virtually seamless.
The infinite loop becomes a simple circle. Previously stressful time-consuming practices turn into manageable processes.
4. Agile
The benefits of serverless reporting platforms do not end once analysts have an account and deploy dashboards. They last as long as you use the tools and support your visuals.
Having to share data between users through an additional application may help popular platforms make money. They do not, however, give you or your team instant feedback. Instead, changes become part of a complex ecosystem.
Entirely serverless applications create an instant and constant feedback loop. Stakeholders ask questions that analysts answer with changes that are available as soon as they are implemented.
5. Highly secure
While it can seem like placing faith in a cloud provider makes your analytics tools less secure. However, the opposite is actually true. Serverless dashboards place the burden of security on a knowledgeable third party.
Cloud providers manage much of your infrastructure, including security updates and patches. You don’t have to worry about managing security yourself, instead relying on a third party whose name rests on being both available and safe.
If anything, data governance becomes a matter of a few SQL statements or UI changes. Most analytic tools offer user management. Serverless solutions are no exception.
The Result: Faster and cheaper time to insight
A sheer volume of features, capabilities, and benefits means that serverless bi applications have the power to speed up time to insight as much as 68 percent. The benefits of a serverless tool do not stop once everyone has an account and is ready to start producing stunning visuals. They last as long as you use your chosen platform.
Serverless tools with online visualizations cut through the infinite loop sandwiching developers between management and engineering. Analysts and CEOs alike can build on data available as soon as it is ingested within a platform created at the click of a button.
How to build a scalable, low-cost observability solution
Meeting the real requirements of modern analytics
The benefits of a modern business intelligence tool are real. A wide variety of industries currently realize the power of serverless visualizers.
Yango Tech, a grocery delivery service in France, built their new partner-facing reporting product within a single week. The platform updates information in real-time while costing 20 percent less than their original ETL processes.
Online payment provider Pagali achieved a 50 percent cost reduction over their RDS Postgres cluster using ClickHouse and DoubleCloud. At the same time, their reports were six times more performant.
Capturing the benefits of a serverless BI tool for end-user analytics
The agility, scale, cost-effectiveness, security and speed of development achieved on large and real-time datasets with serverless analytics tools empowers product innovation and growth. These benefits are difficult to ignore.
As a serverless database and analytics platform, Double Cloud provides the benefits of real-time analytics with ease. Real-time analytics are just a few safe clicks away. Register for a free trial and start discovering the power of real-time reports built on ClickHouse within minutes.
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