Survey reveals top trends for
modernising the data warehouse
Rob Mellor, Vice President and General
Manager EMEA, WhereScape
W
hereScape, a leading provider in
data infrastructure automation
software, has announced the
results of a global survey by the Business
Application Research Center (BARC),
commissioned by WhereScape.
The survey revealed that nearly half of
respondents found time-consuming
development processes at the top of the
list of primary drivers for data warehouse
modernisation as companies look to keep
pace with increasing complexity in the data
landscape. Lack of agility in infrastructure
and internal processes, as well as a lack
of business and technical know-how, are
limiting business’ ability to act.
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Leaders, followers and laggards
A total of 44% of survey participants
found that time-consuming development
processes were the most daunting tasks
in the data warehouse landscape and the
primary reason to modernise. In order to characterise the status quo
of survey participants’ current data
warehouse and analytics landscape, three
groups of respondents were created:
leaders, followers and laggards. Below
are the standout statistics within the
groups surveyed:
This response was followed by restricted
support of self-service BI (35%) and lack
of ability to provide required data (30%).
The inability to meet compliance and
regulatory requirements was only seen as
a major challenge by 14% of participants.
Even less (11%) found insufficient
technology or lack of functionality to be a
limiting factor, suggesting technology has
reached a sound level of maturity.
Methods of modernisation
Data warehouse and ETL automation
is the most important approach to
modernising the data warehouse (60%).
Correspondingly, data integration and
data warehouse automation are the
technologies most frequently utilised.
However, enterprises with more mature
data warehouse landscapes are more
geared towards moving into the cloud,
and report less infrastructure and process
challenges – clearly profiting from
investments in a flexible data and process
architecture, and agile data services.
Challenges faced in modernising
the data warehouse
Participants cited lack of agility in
infrastructure and internal processes
(39%) as well as lack of business and
technical know-how (38%) as key factors
limiting progression in data warehouse
modernisation. Data and analytics literacy
is not only an immensely important
success factor for building an effective
and efficient data warehouse environment.
These skills are invaluable, yet rare, for the
transformation to the digital enterprise.
• The data warehouse/ETL automation
approach to modernisation was
popular, with nearly half or more of
respondents from all groups (leaders,
followers and laggards).
• For leaders, real-time processing of
data is the most important. This is
due to real-time processing being one
of the most important prerequisites
for decision automation and being
an important foundation for agile,
interoperable data services.
• For leaders, analytical databases are
utilised much more intensively than by
followers and laggards (41% compared
to 27% overall).
• For leaders, cloud services play
an important role in approaches
to modernisation of the data
warehouse, with 46% citing cloud
services as a promising alternative
with regard to resource and cost
efficiency of hardware.
• Laggards suffer from a lack of support
from executives for data warehouse
modernisation initiatives (44%).
“In order for IT to advance and deliver
timely business insights needed in today’s
era of exploding data, an automation-
first approach to data warehouse
modernisation is essential.
“Leading organisations are
recognising the need to focus skilled
development resources away from
repetitive coding and onto higher value
projects by arming developers with the
automated tools necessary to agilely
deliver,” said Mellor. ◊
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“This research gives statistical evidence
and puts the BARC stamp on concepts
that WhereScape has been evangelising
for some time. In order for companies
to succeed today, we must automate
repetitive manual tasks that force too
many developers to solve puzzles and
fight fires arising from outdated tools and
methodologies. Only then can companies
focus forward on innovation and agile
collaboration to supply reliable data
to the business at the right time,” said
Rob Mellor, Vice President and General
Manager EMEA, WhereScape.
Drivers for modernisation