Key words, phrases, and acronyms necessary for understanding Business Intelligence.
AlertsAutomatic notifications and/or reports that are triggered by the data itself, such as a sudden shortfall in a sales forecast or an inventory stockout. Alerts can be set to warn users on an imminent event, changes to data, or that new data needs to be entered into the system.
ASPASP stands for Application Service Provider– an approach to software rental that gained in initial popularity in the 1990’s and has faltered since then, due to inherent limitations. ASPs may be thought of as a vendor that hosts a particular implementation of software for you. While this may sound like SaaS, it is in fact dramatically different, since it does not take away the issues with upfront costs, lack of integration, time intensive customization, and other issues associated with implementing your own software. SaaS has significant cost and feature benefits over ASPs.
Cloud ComputingThe use of the web to access technology-enabled services of any type. A key requirement, according to research and analysis giant Gartner, is that it be “massively scalable.” A cloud computing customer can easily scale up (or down) and change its monthly costs to meet changes in demand without having to invest in or manage new servers (or sell excess servers.)
A SaaS/on-demand solution is one of the types of cloud computing providers.
