LucidEra: the People Express of On-Demand BI?

I am not happy to see LucidEra disappearing. It is not a good sign for the SaaS BI market in general and the startups in our space specifically. And I still believe Rob Ashe (IBM/Cognos) was wrong when he said that “BI doesn’t lend itself to SaaS”.

There are some fundamental differences between first generation SaaS BI providers and true cloud-based platforms like Good Data. Some of them are technological while others are simply common sense:

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Good Data is based on true cloud architecture
We use Amazon Web Services to host our multitenant platform and so we have minimal fixed and very low variable costs.
We are true believers in Steve Blank’s Four Steps to the Epiphany, and the idea of spending over $20M before validating our go-to-market strategy is foreign to us.
Cookie-cutter pre-built analytics apps are should be the STARTING POINT for customers to try – not the conclusion of an enterprise sales process.
LucidEra was probably too expensive for small companies and too limited for large ones. And this is why we offer plain-vanilla NetSuite analytics for free.

I am sure we will see the era of success of on-demand analytics. The most useful analogy here is the disruptive business model .. …

There are some fundamental differences between first generation SaaS BI providers and true cloud-based platforms like Good Data. Some of them are technological while others are simply common sense:

Good Data is based on true cloud architecture
We use Amazon Web Services to host our multitenant platform and so we have minimal fixed and very low variable costs.
We are true believers in Steve Blank’s Four Steps to the Epiphany, and the idea of spending over $20M before validating our go-to-market strategy is foreign to us.
Cookie-cutter pre-built analytics apps are should be the STARTING POINT for customers to try – not the conclusion of an enterprise sales process.
LucidEra was probably too expensive for small companies and too limited for large ones. And this is why we offer plain-vanilla NetSuite analytics for free.

I am sure we will see the era of success of on-demand analytics. The most useful analogy here is the disruptive business model of low cost airlines – it did not disappear after the demise of People Express airlines either…