In the modern technology age, finding a cutting-edge solution to improve your business’s performance is a must. This is especially true for large enterprises that often face multiple challenges, most notably in data migration. In a traditional model, those organizations host a huge volume of data that support management decision-making, which can be difficult to migrate without interrupting businesses operations and data flow.
To smoothen the workflow and make sure that the data warehouse is scalable enough to serve a growing business’ needs, many leading companies are working on migration to cloud-based data warehouses from their traditional on-premise systems. The advantages of migrating to the cloud are very clear and the industry is showing it. According to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, spending on off-premises cloud IT infrastructure will grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate of 10.8%, reaching $55.7 billion in 2022.
In this article, we look at the top three benefits of moving your Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) to the cloud and how to get the process started.
Cost-effectiveness
The first and most obvious reason to move to the cloud is the process’s cost-effectiveness. This is especially true for scenarios when the existing software is becoming out-dated and can be very expensive to replace.
With cloud-based services, such problems don’t exist. This is primarily because it’s a utility-based model that allows businesses to pay for exactly what they use and when they use it. This eliminates any on-going fees businesses might face in the future i.e. to upgrade out-dated software.
Businesses that move their on-premise data to the cloud also benefit from a low maintenance and low cost ownership tool that features automated maintenance, back-up and disaster recovery that can save them money and trouble when it comes to complex security, privacy and governance standards.
Moreover, by utilizing cloud hosting, enterprises are able to cut the running costs that come with expensive assets like servers, floor space, and energy bills that are likely to increase year-on-year with an on-premise facility.
Made to grow
Another consideration of any smart entrepreneur should be the cloud’s scalability. When it comes to data warehousing, it’s important to keep all the resources capacious enough so they can fit the ever-increasing volumes of data that are collected over time.
This task can be particularly challenging with the traditional on-premise EDWs, which can be simply not big enough to stock all the archive files – and this is when cloud-based data warehouse comes into play.
With the cloud, enterprises are no longer at risk of facing storage limits, as cloud services are quite flexible, which allows the data warehouse to rapidly expand and contract data as needed. This feature is especially advantageous for industries that heavily rely on reporting as the cloud environment has the flexibility to add new data sources to the data warehouse on the fly.
Boosted performance
With the development of new analytic paradigms, such as machine learning, businesses need a platform that allows them to work with both detailed and aggregated data at scales never before imaged. Cloud data warehouses are predominantly optimized for analytics, and thanks to the use of columnar storage and massively parallel processing (MPP) they perform to a maximum level when running complex queries.
Another benefit of using cloud-based services to host a business’ data is process automation that simplifies development and reduces the risk of data integration and infrastructure projects. This is critical as it greatly reduces the chances of business’ losing data, money or credibility due to human error.
Adding data warehouse automation software to the mix is also beneficial if a business requires information being available on-demand. By putting the data warehouse in a virtual cloud, there is a guarantee that data is available and accessible for analysis much faster than if developers are reliant on hand coding to operate and deliver data infrastructure.
Ready for a change?
Although the process of moving your enterprise to a cloud-based warehouse might seem overwhelming, there are a number of services that can help to migrate existing data-warehouses to the cloud. With services like Microsoft’s Azure SQL Data Warehouse, customers only pay for query performance and storage, which reduces the need for a huge sum of money to make the move.
