A Definitive Guide For Choosing A Modern Data Warehouse

Gone are the days when businesses preferred using conventional and on-premise data warehouses for making important decisions and streamlining their processes. Over time, companies are switching to modern and cloud-based data warehouses that provide them with greater efficiency, scalability, and flexibility.

However, if you are starting your journey of switching to a modern data warehouse, you will encounter multiple alternatives at your disposal. Analyzing them and choosing the warehouse that best suits your needs is very important. While you can always a reliable data warehouse comparison guide online, it is important to consider a few specific factors as you zero in on the best modern data warehouse for your business.

Before getting into how you should choose a modern data warehouse, let us briefly understand what a data warehouse is and why it is important.

What Is A Data Warehouse?

A data warehouse is an architecture designed specifically for gathering and storing data arising out of transactions, data stores, and external data sources. In simpler words, it is a central repository of all your records that can be assessed as per your needs. A data warehouse uses your data to aggregate the records and create summaries that provide users with valuable insights.

A data warehouse can be compared to any physical warehouse of goods. It holds all your records in one place and stores them for you to access as and when you need them Moreover, it allows you to make sense of this data by analyzing it and creating extensive reports. These reports help businesses analyze their performance, understand their strengths and weaknesses, and take steps in the right direction.

In the age of digitization, businesses have started making the much-needed switch to modern data warehouses. These warehouses do not require hardware installation and can be accessed from any location around the world. Built on the cloud, these warehouses provide greater storage spaces for businesses and facilitate flexible processes. Moreover, modern data warehouses can be scaled according to your specific needs and preferences in a quick and hassle-free manner.

Important Aspects To Consider While Choosing A Modern Data Warehouse

While all modern data warehouses are beneficial and help you leverage your business processes, it is important to choose an alternative that best suits your business needs. Here are a few important aspects to consider while choosing an ideal modern data warehouse for your business:

Unique Business Needs

Before anything else, it is important to consider the needs and requirements that are unique to your business. Different data warehouses are built for catering to different purposes and business departments. Make sure you choose a modern data warehouse that is in sync with your business needs.

For example, if you work on JSON and do not have a dedicated administrator, you can opt for a data warehouse like Snowflake. On the other hand, Amazon Redshift is an ideal choice for businesses that are looking for petabyte-scale modern data warehouses.

Platform Scalability

The scalability of a data warehouse holds high importance when it comes to making the right choice. If you may need to scale your business up or down in near future to accommodate more customers/traffic, always make sure that you implement a data warehouse that is highly scalable. Although every modern data warehouse provides you with decent scalability, choose the alternative that best suits your scalability requirements.

For this, you will need to assess your current business needs and foresee the processes you may need to undertake for scaling your business. If scalability is your primary concern, implement a data warehouse with faster query performance and high scalability as compared to its peers.

Processing Speed

Analyze the alternatives you have at your disposal based on the processing speed offered by modern data warehouses. It is advisable to implement a data warehouse that provides you with instant data analytics, supports streaming data, and queries data in real time. This allows you to make quicker and more informed business decisions in time.

Moreover, implementing a high-speed data warehouse helps users to be situationally aware and responsive to real-time business events. This prevents you from taking costly risks and helps you serve your customers better.

Data Security And Governance

One of the biggest reasons why some businesses still hesitate to switch to modern cloud-based data warehouses is security concerns. Companies are often insecure about storing their data on a public cloud and worried about the privacy of their records. Choosing a modern data warehouse that gives you enhanced data security and governance is important.

Especially in the case of organizations operating in sectors like Healthcare and Finance where the data they deal with is highly sensitive, it becomes mandatory to implement a data warehouse that adheres to data compliance regulations and keeps their client data private.

Most modern data warehouses make sure that your business data is protected with the help of regular security updates, data encryption, robust data governance, and other security practices. This prevents your IT team from worrying about the security of data as the warehouse would take care of the same. Make sure you see the regulations a data warehouse complies with and the security standards it meets before implementing the same within your organization.

Business Intelligence

Technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning have arrived and are here to stay. They allow modern data warehouses to leverage business intelligence and enhance the insights provided to the users. Always make sure that you choose a data warehouse that incorporates business intelligence in the best way possible for making valuable predictions and making smart assessments. This prevents users from taking unnecessary risks and provides businesses with a complete picture of their performance with intelligent analytics.

The Final Word

These were some of the most important aspects to be considered while choosing a modern data warehouse. The key to implementing an ideal data warehouse is to avoid making hurried decisions and thoroughly comparing all different alternatives available to you. Always remember that you would be able to drive digitization within your organization only if you work with a data warehouse that is in tune with your business needs.