In a recent interview, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers (KPCB) General Partner Matt Murphy shared an interesting opinion about the growth and direction of tech companies.

Simply put, Murphy feels that the tech companies changing the world are those that raise investment through private equity rather than through public stocks. (A correlation possibly related to how they address innovation.) Many of the companies now attracting high valuations in the private equity market are those that leverage the power of cloud computing to deliver solutions with shorter sales and implementation cycles.

Overcoming barriers to adoption.

Cloud computing is exciting. It might even be “world changing,” as Murphy describes it. But it hasn’t been without its barriers to adoption, which include security concerns and cost.

But as Murphy points out, the popularity is growing, and the investments prove that the market’s concerns aren’t nearly as prevalent as they once were. Barriers to adoption are reduced by the following factors:

• Near-immediate trial options
• No on-premise consulting and deployment contracts
• Ability to sell and deploy with less IT involvement

Today’s executives look to cloud-based solutions for fast results while minimizing capital expenditures and opportunity cost. Cloud computing is meeting them on all fronts, with spectacular results.

Faster implementation, faster time to insights.

Instead of requiring long sales cycles through an IT purchasing process, an executive can get up and running with new breed of cloud-based solutions with minimal time spent on purchasing and implementation. Speed to implementation helps optimize the return on such investments. How much time can any company afford to wait to see if a new service is going to pay off?

This is certainly true if a company is looking for a solution to help them know how their business is running or to gain increased efficiencies through business intelligence and analytics. How long can companies afford to fly blind or to agonize over huge investments that may not ultimately pan out?

The importance of “speed to insight” is crucial when evaluating business intelligence solutions.  How quickly can an executive team realize the value of their investment in making better-informed decisions?  The speed at which a company is able to get up and running and gaining new insight also results in reduced implementation costs and fewer bad decisions. Understanding how speed is achieved is crucial when evaluating business intelligence solutions and possible tradeoffs.

Getting ahead of the pack.

Aspiring entrepreneurs can see where the money is going, and that means an assorted crop of new companies are popping up.

Here are a few areas to look for when selecting a solution that will help you to move quickly from sale to implementation to fresh new insights:

• Easy Data Integration: The solution should be able to integrate with your data, regardless of where it is currently located or how it is accessed.
• Visualization Options: A solid solution should provide you with dozens of charting and visualization options that allow anyone to quickly see data in new ways.
• Best Practices – Beyond technical ability, your solution provider should deliver best practices, processes or professional services that come from experience in implementing hundreds of customers with similar needs.

Why I really love my job.

As a member of the product management team, I think it’s a great product challenge to continue to focus on a customer’s need to gain insights and make decisions as quickly as possible.

Accelerating a company’s “speed to insight” is something that makes Domo stand apart from other companies in the BI space. Just as when evaluating sports cars, when comparing BI solutions, speed is definitely sexy. And that’s what our service is all about. While some might argue that Business Intelligence solutions are anything but alluring, Domo is doing all we can to make executive decision making “sexy as a service.”