Data warehousing has been around for a long time. It’s a key step that many companies took to modernize their infrastructure and house their rapidly growing stores of data. But will 2013 be the last year for the enterprise data warehouse as we know it?
Many seem to think so. When Gartner released its 2013 tech trends last month, it noted that Big Data was “leading organizations to abandon the concept of a single enterprise data warehouse containing all information needed for decisions.” The Huffington Post was a bit more decisive, as BlueKai’s CEO declared that “the age of the data warehouse is behind us. It’s gone and it’s not coming back.”
It’s an easy conclusion to see Big Data come along and declare that the centralized data warehouse is on its way out. But there’s a big difference between being a less preferred choice and complete irrelevance. The data warehouse is not dead – it has become another legacy system.
Data should be integrated and respected from all sources, including data warehouses. While analytical tools are reducing the data warehouse’s role as the standard location for data, what’s important is that companies continue to respect the variety of data sources they have, regardless of where data is stored. There may no longer be a need to try and move everything to a centralized location, but that doesn’t mean that data stores will cease to be relevant.
Companies would do well to continue to embrace the data warehouses they currently have. They contain data that’s a key asset to your company’s entire knowledge ecosystem. Leave us a comment below to share your thoughts on the future of the enterprise data warehouse, or read more posts about big data. For more information on how to use data from all sources for greater insight, check out our whitepapers.
