Today, collecting, organizing, and revealing insights from data is more critical than ever. With the explosion of data streaming in from diverse sources — including people, products, and things — data is now the currency of business success. As a centralized repository of such data, the data warehouse plays a vital role in delivering answers for individuals in a variety of roles at the enterprise.
The Data Warehouse as a Process
At Teradata, we see the data warehouse (DWH) as a process, not a product — a constantly evolving and learning approach that assembles and manages data to answer business questions that were once impossible to answer. An enterprise data warehouse (EDW) expands this concept to the organizational level, helping multiple users and teams make ad-hoc discoveries and drill-down analyses.
While there are several types of data warehouses, they typically:
Are subject-oriented
People can access data via topics tied to business units and processes that they work with daily.
Integrate data consistently
Data formats and values are standardized across all tables to ensure complete and accurate data that users can understand. This data must also have integrity — in other words, data cannot show purchasing transactions without corresponding customer records.
Update in real-time
Changes are tracked over time creating what’s effectively the corporate memory of the enterprise. All data must be retained and not impacted inaccurately when updates occur.
Empowering the Data Warehouse for Enterprises
A well-designed data warehousing process can transform an organization’s culture, strategy, and trajectory by:
- Sharing information across functional units – Bringing together disparate sources of data into one place can reduce data siloes that may exist at an enterprise and ensure data consistency.
- Providing vital business answers quickly and accurately and incorporating multiple viewpoints – Efficiently delivering answers to the toughest business questions helps decision-makers make the right strategic choices.
- Providing a single version of the truth – Everyone in an organization can work from the same information to draw conclusions about the state of the business. This level of universal access relieves pressure on IT as more citizen data scientists can add value.
With these capabilities, businesses can gain increased speed and flexibility of analysis, streamlined and accessible data processes, and improved understanding of customers’ behavior.
History of Data Warehousing
While the idea of data warehousing first took shape in the 1960s and 1970s, a groundbreaking moment came in 1988 with the publication of a IBM Systems Journal paper, which Barry Devlin and Paul Murphy wrote about a need for an “integrated warehouse of company data” that could “draw together the various strands of informational system activity within the company.”
As Internet adoption expanded and smartphones emerged, cloud computing became a viable option to managing the explosion of data produced and transacted around the world. Cloud computing introduced a new type of data warehouse — one that was cloud-based and offered as-a-service.
Teradata’s Perspective
For more than four decades, Teradata has been at the forefront of data warehouse design and development. With Teradata Vantage, we are combining this expertise and ingenuity with the flexibility and scalability of the cloud.
Teradata Vantage is the leading hybrid cloud data analytics software that leverages 100% of your data to analyze anything, anywhere, at any time. The solution is built and priced for industry-leading performance at scale and is simple to integrate with your current systems. Teradata Vantage provides flexibility and control, no matter your needs or what evolving technologies are available.
Curious about what Teradata Vantage can do for you?
Learn more about Vantage