Welcome to “Selecting a Data Warehouse System” After watching this video, you will be able
to: Identify criteria organizations can use to
evaluate data warehouse systems; Describe key considerations for each data
warehouse selection criteria; Summarize how organizations decide between
an on-premises or a public cloud data warehouse system; List the various types of warehouse costs. Let’s look at the criteria businesses use
to evaluate data warehouse systems, including features and capabilities, compatibility
and implementation considerations, ease of use and skills, support considerations, and
various costs. One of the primary data warehouse features,
or consideration, for an organization is location. Data warehouses can exist on-premises, on
appliances, and on one or more cloud locations. To select a location, organizations must balance
multiple demands related to data ingestion, storage, and access. For some organizations, securing their data
is their highest priority, requiring a mandatory on-premises solution. Multi-location businesses that grapple with
data privacy requirements such as CCPA or GDPR need on-premises or geo-specific data
warehouse locations. Every organization balances security and data
privacy requirements with the need for speed that delivers critical, profit-producing business
insights. Organizations will also want to consider features
and capabilities related to architecture and structure. Is the organization ready to commit to a vendor-specific
architecture? Does the organization need multi-cloud installation
such as multiple data warehouses in multiple locations? Does the solution scale to meet anticipated
future needs? What data types are supported and what types
of data does the organization ingest? If your organization currently analyzes dark
data or is planning for the implementation of using semi-structured and unstructured
data, you’ll want a data warehouse system that supports these data types. And an organization that processes big data
needs a system that supports both batch and streaming data. Capabilities that affectthe ease of implementation
include data governance, data migration, and data transformation capabilities. With the data warehouse system in place,
how easily can the organization optimize and reoptimize system performance as needs change? Another consideration is user management. With more organizations implementing a zero-trust
security policy because of expensive data breaches, implementing programs that manage
and validate system users is mandatory. And notifications and reports are essential
for organizations to correct errors and mitigate risks before minor issues become larger problems. Let’s explore ease of use and skills. Does your organization’s staff have the
skills needed to implement a specific data warehousing vendor’s technology, and if
not, how quickly and easily can they gain those skills? Complex, large data warehouse deployments
can require additional work from your implementation partner, so their expertise also greatly matters. Finally, do the technology and engineering
staff who architect, deploy, and administer front-end querying, reporting, and visualization
tools have the skills needed to configure your new system quickly? Next, let's review some support considerations. Support is essential and can become frustrating
and expensive if not well planned for. You might find that by using a single vendor,
you can leverage one highly accountable, responsible source, potentially saving you time, money,
and frustration. You’ll also want to verify the availability
of service level agreements for uptime, security, scalability, and other data warehouse system
issues. Validate the vendor’s support hours and
channels, such as by phone, email, chat, or text. Finally, does the vendor offer self-service
solutions and an active rich user community? After all this analysis, it’s time to evaluate
and compare costs. When calculating costs for a data warehouse
system, consider more than the initial costs. Consider the total cost of ownership, or TCO,
for running systems for several years. TCO includes: Infrastructure such as compute and storage
costs – whether on-premises or on cloud; Software licensing, or in case of cloud offerings,
their subscription or usage costs; Data migration and integration costs for moving
data into the warehouse and pruning and purging as required; Administration costs for personnel to manage
the systems and to train them; and Recurring support and maintenance costs paid
to the warehousing vendor or implementation partner. In this video you learned that: Businesses evaluate data warehouse systems
based on features and capabilities, compatibility and implementation, ease of use and required
skills, support quality and availability, and multiple cost considerations. An organization might need a traditional on-premises
installation to adhere to data security and privacy requirements. Public cloud sites offer organizations the
benefits of economies of scale including powerful compute power and scalable storage resulting
in flexible price-for-performance options. And, when selecting a data warehouse system consider
the total cost of ownership including infrastructure, compute and storage, data migration, administration,
and data maintenance costs in your calculations.