Annoucements this week suggest that cloud and big data are set for a big year across Europe.

As population nears seven billion, new dashboards from German analytics giant SAP allows governing bodies to utilise United Nations data on growth.

Last Thursday, Obis Omni held our 6th Forum of 2010 and we are absolutely thrilled by the phenomenal response we have already received from our Obis Omni members.

Obis Omni confirms date for the 6th Obis Omni Forum:
Driving the Full Value Out of Your Business Intelligence and Performance Management Investment in a New Economy

BI applications are expected to have the highest impact on organizations such as manufacturing firms over the next two to five years, according to the Aberdeen Group's 2009 State of the Market: Mid-Year Insights Report.

There is a strong link here to my Vision vs Pragmatism article. In this I argued that Vision and Pragmatism are both essential for the success of any project, be that related to change, to IT, and certainly when using IT to drive change. Unsurprisingly, similar comments apply to whether a holistic or incremental approach to BI is the superior route. However, in this case, I will come down more firmly on the side of one of the options

Though cloud computing is increasingly becoming part of enterprise IT strategy, it will likely be a while until large-scale, mission-critical databases make their way to the cloud. Businesses still have concerns over security, scalability and performance that must be addressed as the technology matures.