The data warehouse is experiencing pressure from increasing data volumes, more users, and tight budgets—a triple threat to its existence and value. In addition, new data types are coming into play.
These are among the issues that will be addressed when Lynda Partner, VP, marketing & analytics as a service, The Pythian Group, presents a talk on the changing data warehouse, titled “The Data Warehouse Is Dead,” at DBTA’s Data Summit 2019.
Partner will speak on Tuesday, May 21, at 10:45 at Data Summit 2019, which will be held at the Hyatt Regency Boston, May 21-22, with pre-conference workshops on Monday, May 20.
According to Partner, the increased pressure from higher data volumes, more users, and tighter budgets means the old-school data warehouse may not be delivering insights at the speed of business. However, are a number of alternatives to meet modern analytics infrastructure needs, says Partner, whose presentation will outline in detail why a modern data platform is required to deliver on new analytics demands.
“The data warehouse has been the cornerstone of analytic infrastructure within the enterprise since the late 1980s," says Partner. But, think about that, she notes. "In the 1980s, Lionel Richie spent 21 weeks at the top of the music charts, MC Hammer pants were all the rage in men’s fashion, cabbage patch dolls were a top seller, and cloud still meant that fluffy white thing in the sky. Times have changed but the traditional data warehouse really hasn't kept up to the changes in the volume, velocity and variety of data we're all faced with managing today.”
And, it's not just data that is changing; users have changed too, says Partner. “Increasingly, they are demanding access to all the data using tools they already know. The rise of Bring Your Own Analytics is being stunted by the lack of flexibility in the traditional data warehouse. Even if we could address the data and user pressures, traditional data warehouses are expensive and don't scale easily or quickly; in an agile world, that's the kiss of death.”
The biggest impetus for change in the data warehouse world is cloud, according to Partner. “Cloud data warehouse, especially when offered as a service can meet most of the needs of today's reality but they are not the entire answer. They are still largely oriented to governed, structured data at a time when users and systems are demanding access to raw and ungoverned data. Balancing the needs of discovery centered users like data scientists with the corporate needs for data governance and control is not just a technology problem but extending the cloud data warehouse into a cloud data platform can help.”
Partner says she hopes that attendees to her session will gain an understanding of what a data platform is and how it can be the foundation of a data strategy that will allow them to extend the use of data throughout the organization—and facilitate programs from insight creation to machine learning. Attendees will also take away an understanding of the five reasons that most data warehouse modernization projects fail and what they can do to avoid making the same mistakes, says Partner.
DBTA’s Data Summit 2019 conference will be held at the Hyatt Regency Boston, May 21-22, with pre-conference workshops on Monday, May 20. Registration is now open.