In the corporate world, data warehouses are widely known as essential components that are critical in business intelligence and different analytics operations. However, there’s always confusion among different individuals in whether the optimal route for deploying data warehouses is the cloud or on-premise approach. This has remained a debate between professionals and businesses. With all the due sincerity, the truth in this just like many other things is that there is always no one-size-fits-all solution in data warehousing solutions. This is largely due to the dynamic nature of businesses as well as the advantages and disadvantages that each of the approaches has. For instance, while the cloud offers unbeatable scalability and low-cost advantages, the on-premise DW, on the other hand, offers security. This, therefore, raises a question; what are the benefits of cloud computing versus on-premises data warehouses. In this article, we look at these aspects one by one.
Scalability
Scalability is perhaps one of the biggest advantages of going cloud over the on-premise solution. Cloud ensures that data storage can be scaled up or down effortlessly and easily. On the contrary, scaling up on the on-premise systems apart from being resource intensive may also be time-consuming because it involves buying and installing new hardware and maybe software. Conversely, the cloud can be scaled up or down with little hassle if any at all.
Reliability
Any tech solution which comes up has been largely clouded by fears about reliability. This aspect is a significant barrier to adoption. The key advantage of cloud-based data warehouses is that depending on the provider and their SLA, they are always available. For example, Google promises a monthly uptime of 99.9% for its cloud storage while Amazon promises a 99.95 percent availability of its cloud data warehouse service. This is due to the replication of data across different clusters to ensure that data is always available in the cloud service.
For the on-premise DW, reliability is dependent on constrained resources such as hardware, software, and staff. DW maintenance, as well as the ability of the organisation to customise it as required, is solely in the hands of the organisation.
Cost
Just like any other internet service, cloud computing offers high-cost benefits through the elimination of high upfront costs. This option does not require the organisation to have operational costs, hardware, server rooms or IT related members of staff that are all needed for on-premise DW. This therefore significantly lowers the operational costs. This is among the reasons why many companies are moving their data warehousing to the cloud.
Security
With connectivity comes a security issue which is among the biggest challenges to many organisations. This is also one of the biggest challenges that cloud service providers have to face when facing their customers. Despite these challenges, cloud computing still offers the best expertise which is capable of handling security challenges. This, however, depends heavily with the provider. Bigger cloud computing service providers invest heavily on security since the user data must be protected at all costs. On the other side, the on-premise data warehouse may have constrained resources which may impact security and by extent service provision. However, the majority of organisations still see on-premise data warehouses as highly secure.
As evident from the above list of advantages, the majority of businesses benefit significantly by deploying a data warehouse that is based on the cloud. The most notable advantages are associated with cost-effectiveness, scalability, ease of use and accessibility. These are the aspects that on-premise DW’s lack. I can therefore clearly state that delegating the management of a data warehouse to a third party which is the cloud service provider will allow the organisation to concentrate on other things such as service provision without worrying about hardware, software, and expertise in the storage of data. This significantly increases profits, efficiency, and security of the business.
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