Buyer's Guide
A buyer's guide to selecting the best data warehouse product
Choosing the right technology can be challenging, but this guide walks you through the evaluation and buying process to help you pinpoint which data warehouse platform will best meet your organization's needs.
Introduction
Despite the emergence of Hadoop and other big data technologies, the data warehouse is as relevant as ever. Data warehouses provide companies with a practical, proven way to analyze structured business data to support decision making.
As this buyer's guide demonstrates, there are numerous benefits from deploying and using a data warehouse product. These include helping organizations improve operations and business processes, thereby increasing revenue and raising profits. Designed for decision support and business intelligence activities, a data warehouse allows a company to analyze its historical data over time. This data is often aggregated so that it's easier to scan, access and query, providing users with multiple views of information presented in logical, easily understood groupings.
There are four main types of data warehouse platforms: traditional relational database management systems, specialized analytics database management systems (DBMSs), appliances and cloud data warehouse offerings. The data warehouse environment can differ greatly across organizations, however, as these platforms can be deployed as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), data marts or a combination thereof. An EDW is used across an enterprise, whereas a data mart is smaller and focuses on individual or specific departmental needs. Depending on the size of your organization, you can create multiple data marts and integrate them with an EDW.
In addition to company size, several other factors go into determining which data warehouse product is right for your organization, including IT department size and availability of resources and budget considerations. Once you know which deployment option makes the most sense for your site, your next step is to investigate the capabilities of each platform type and match them to your needs. You can use the criteria outlined in this buyer's guide along with an analysis of the leading data warehouse products to help pinpoint which platform would work best.
1What is?-
What to expect from a data warehouse product
Organizations are using data warehouses to deliver actionable business intelligence that can be used to make important decisions on such things as customer behavior, business trends and sales. Learn what types of data reside in a data warehouse as well as how your organization could benefit from implementing one of the four different types of data warehouse platforms.
The benefits of deploying a data warehouse platform
Big data may be all the rage, but data warehouse platforms are still being utilized by companies of all sizes. Expert Craig S. Mullins takes a look at the technology. Continue Reading
2Do I need?-
The business benefits of implementing a data warehouse platform
Before deciding to invest in a data warehouse product, you must first explore how your company could benefit from using this technology to capture and analyze data from various sources. Armed with this information, you can match the various use cases for data warehousing to the most appropriate data warehouse platform types.
Evaluating your need for a data warehouse platform
There's still a place for a data warehouse platform in the world of big data -- but first, you have to ask yourself some questions. Start with: Why does your organization need one? Continue Reading



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3How to buy-
Criteria to consider when choosing a data warehouse platform
Every data warehouse vendor offers a variety of different options, and while there are core features that every platform should include, your implementation and usage requirements will dictate which are most important to you. Knowing what to look for in a vendor product can help you determine which platform is right for you.
Evaluating the key features of data warehouse platforms
Choosing between the different types of data warehouse platforms can be simplified once you know which deployment option best meets your project requirements. Continue Reading
4Which should I buy?-
Which data warehouse product is right for your business?
Now that you've determined which deployment option and platform features will best meet your company's needs, let's examine the leading vendor data warehouse products.
Five factors to help select the right data warehouse product
How big is your company, and what resources does it have? What are your performance needs? Answering these questions and others can help you select the right data warehouse platform. Continue Reading
5Top product overviews-
The leading data warehouse platforms
Is your company considering a traditional or analytics DBMS for its data warehouse? What about an appliance? Or is it contemplating using a cloud data warehouse as a service? Here, we take an in-depth look at the top data warehouse products offered today.
Exploring the Actian Analytics Platform appliance
With the Actian Analytics Platform data warehouse appliance, both Hadoop and non-Hadoop clients can use their existing SQL applications and investments on new data sources. Continue Reading
IBM dashDB delivers with cloud data warehouse
Available through IBM's Bluemix platform, IBM dashDB is a data warehouse as a service that includes IBM BLU Acceleration technology and embedded Netezza in-database analytics. Continue Reading
A look at the upcoming Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse
The Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse lets you scale compute and storage independently based on your performance needs, so you pay for query performance only when you need it. Continue Reading
Exploring Amazon Redshift cloud data warehouse as a service
The Amazon Redshift petabyte-scale cloud data warehouse as a service enables organizations to analyze data in a cost-effective way, using their existing business intelligence tools. Continue Reading
Examining the IBM PureData System for Analytics appliance
Powered by Netezza technology, the IBM PureData System for Analytics data warehouse appliance enables users to execute complex queries and get results quickly. Continue Reading
What to expect from Oracle Exadata Database Machine
Oracle Exadata Database Machine combines hardware and software to enable analytics, batch, reporting and other tasks to run simultaneously within and across databases. Continue Reading
Exploring the HPE Vertica Analytics Platform
The Vertica Analytics Platform from Hewlett Packard Enterprise is designed to be used for data warehouses and other complex, query-intensive applications. Continue Reading
Pivotal Greenplum streamlines big data query optimization
The Pivotal Greenplum open source shared-nothing data warehouse delivers high query performance and throughput, and provides rapid analytics on big data. Continue Reading
A look inside the SAP IQ column-oriented database
The SAP IQ column-oriented database is designed for large data warehouses that require high scalability, rapid data loading and optimal query performance. Continue Reading
Examining the Teradata Data Warehouse
With both relational and columnar options, the Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse gives companies an efficient, scalable appliance they can deploy in-house or in the cloud. Continue Reading
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