BUILDING THE BUSINESS CASE: DATA WAREHOUSE APPLIANCES

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1 BUILDING THE BUSINESS CASE: DATA WAREHOUSE APPLIANCES Has Data Warehousing Reached Its Inflection Point? table of contents + Building the Business Case... 2 With the Dell Quickstart A TechTarget White Paper brought to you by Dell Software

2 The advent of affordable, easy-to-deploy data warehouse appliances means more organizations can reap the benefits of data analytics and achieve quick time to value. Once an unseen part of organizations computing architectures, data warehousing has become an integral, high-profile element in today s business toolkit. With use cases ranging from simple applications that help companies understand consumer preferences to massive big data initiatives in areas such as financial modeling and energy exploration, the importance of data analytics is now a given. Data warehousing has even attained increased appreciation among nontechnical audiences: Depictions in popular culture, such as the movie Moneyball, and other mass media discussions have cast a bright light on how organizations are using data warehouses to capture, analyze and use mountainous amounts of data to make smarter business decisions. But for the most part, the adoption of data warehousing beyond mainframe-centric organizations with the technical acumen and deep pockets necessary to procure, deploy and manage the technology has been slow and steady, rather than meteoric. The reasons for this are self-evident: Data warehousing is often viewed as a complex, relatively expensive proposition, often taking months or longer to deploy and with price tags reaching into the mid-six figures and beyond. Even in flush economic times, that kind of budget and staff commitment was made primarily by very large organizations or those in transaction-intensive industries such as finance, retailing or social media. But data warehousing appliances have changed the rules of the game. As the name implies, these solutions are lightweight in their physical footprint, cost and deployment timelines. Don t be fooled, however: Data warehousing appliances are workhorses, combining industry-standard hardware with advanced analytics tools and tailored services to help small and midsize organizations get fully functioning data warehouses up and running quickly. Still, any IT director who goes into the corner office with a proposal to implement a data warehouse solution is likely to be confronted with a cold-water dose of reality. While the CFO and other top executives undoubtedly will ask the usual pragmatic questions about procurement costs and return on investment, they re also likely to ask a more fundamental question: Do we really need it? After all, many small and midsize organizations may feel that they have gotten by up to now with the traditional 1

3 blood, sweat and Excel approach. As obviously inefficient and incomplete an approach as that may be, it still is thrown up as a workaround for organizations whose management is still rooting in the old paradigm of data warehousing is expensive and complex. Building the Business Case Building the business case for a data warehouse appliance requires an understanding of the financial, operational and strategic benefits of the solution. Here are some considerations for IT leaders and line-of-business managers to remember when recommending a data warehouse appliance: 1. It may seem elemental, but the best answer you can give to the do we really need it? question is the simplest one: yes. Data warehousing is no longer applicable only to large organizations, as even small businesses are generating, capturing, sharing and analyzing data from more sources than ever. In addition to traditional data sources like computers and databases, the increasing use of virtualization, cloud computing, data-centric technologies like RFID, and employee-initiated applications and BYOD (bring your own device) means that businesses are awash in data that can be turned into real insights. And those insights don t have to fit the definition of big data, with its massive data stores and sophisticated extract, transform and load (ETL) requirements. For instance, a small retailer could improve its profit margins by five to eight percentage points simply by having detailed trends on which items are most likely to be out of stock on the weekends after running promotional advertising, and adjusting its forecasts accordingly. 2. Look for appliances that offer more of an integrated solution to speed deployment. Unlike traditional data warehouses, appliances come as an all-in-one package that includes hardware, software, analytics tools and the services needed for quick deployment and fast time to value. Be wary of so-called appliances that require the customer to self-integrate hardware and software components, or that don t come with important services such as deployment assistance and training. You ll also want to be sure that the appliance offers a scalability pathway that allows the organization to step up performance, speed, storage capacity and data-handling capabilities as needs evolve. 3. Mitigate your deployment and operational risks by turning to a partner with the knowledge to quickly and reliably implement appliances. With in-house IT teams stretched and likely lacking the skills to deploy data warehousing appliances, it makes sense to use a partner to ensure that deployments are done quickly and properly the first time. This will improve reliability, resiliency and 2

4 security, saving you unnecessary headaches and costs down the road. Also, ask your appliance supplier about regular health checks on the operational status of your solution so that potential issues can be headed off before they surface. 4. Achieve cost predictability by using appliances with all-in-one pricing. Some appliance-based solutions may offer a low hardware price as an inducement for a proof of concept or promotional offer, but that pricing becomes a lot less attractive when you add in the cost of software, analytics tools and deployment services. The ideal data warehouse appliance comes not only as a fully integrated solution, but with all-inclusive pricing as well. 5. Data warehouse appliances are extremely versatile because of their price points, ease of deployment and scalability. While appliances meet the growing data analytics needs of small and midsize organizations, they can also be a great solution for analytics-hungry departments of large enterprises. For a small organization, an appliance can easily act as its enterprise data warehouse because it allows the organization to start with a smaller solution that fits into its budget and doesn t require a lot of specialized IT help to get up and running. Or at larger companies that may already have a larger data warehouse in place, appliances can be a great solution for small functional groups that don t have the budget or technical staff to meet their unique needs. A data warehouse appliance can be installed quickly and allow the group to replicate data off the enterprise data warehouse to meet specific requirements, while respecting corporate IT governance policies. Getting Up and Running A prime example of a purpose-built solution that provides powerful but affordable and easy-to-deploy data analytics capabilities is Dell s Quickstart. It uses Dell s cutting-edge PowerEdge 12th generation servers, preconfigured and optimized with Microsoft s SQL Server 2012 Data Warehouse Edition for powerful data analytics. Additionally, it includes the Dell Boomi cloud-based data integration tool and Dell s array of planning, deployment, training and management services all in a single, fully optimized integrated package. To meet the needs of different-sized organizations, Dell offers the appliance with either 5 terabytes or 12 TB of user data. 3

5 There are several attractive benefits for organizations using the Dell Quickstart Data Warehouse Appliance, including: n Easy, fast deployment. One of the big obstacles to more pervasive adoption of data warehousing has been the long time and extensive commitment of technical personnel required to get a fully functional data warehouse up and running. It s not unusual for traditional data warehouse implementations to take four to six months, often with disruptions to production environments to install, test, tweak and operationalize the data warehouse. Dell s Quickstart can be fully operational in a matter of weeks because the solution is preconfigured and comes with Dell s expert deployment services, as well as user on-boarding services such as training and support. A typical small business with cloud-based applications like Salesforce.com and PeopleSoft can often start running simple, actionable reports by the time the initial training period is completed. n Affordable, predictable procurement and implementation costs. Because the appliance is built on well-established, industry-standard technology such as Dell s Intel-based servers and Microsoft SQL, the package is offered at price points that fit into even the tight budgets typically seen in smaller organizations or enterprise workgroups. Customers pay one price for the entire package hardware, software and all of the services necessary to get users up to speed in driving true business intelligence as soon as possible. This is an important point, because traditional data warehousing deployment services alone can come with a hefty and unpredictable price tag, as many organizations need their solutions to be uniquely customized to their computing environment and business processes. n Market-leading Dell Boomi data integration tool set. ETL is at the heart of data integration, but ETL tools can be expensive and require sophisticated technical skills to deploy. Dell Boomi is a powerful but easy-to-implement cloudbased data integration tool set that actually goes beyond ETL by providing direct connection to essential applications, regardless of whether the app resides on-premises or in the cloud. Through a single portal, organizations get the full functionality of data integration via the much-discussed single pane of glass. In traditional ETL for data integration, additional software is often necessary to get that integrated visibility, or additional data manipulation must be done manually. Dell Boomi comes with more than 100 prebuilt connectors to popular, essential applications. 4

6 n Data warehousing and business intelligence services. Dell s solution comes wrapped with such essential services as deployment and setup, a startup foundation package, regular data warehouse health checks, and hardware and software support. Using Dell s experienced services and support team alleviates the pressure on already-stretched in-house IT staff to get the solution up and running, and ensures that it continues to operate at maximum efficiency after the initial deployment. Summary Data warehousing has quickly become an essential building block to the goal of 360-degree business intelligence that synthesizes myriad data from different sources into an actionable set of insights. To bring true data warehousing to a broader set of organizations, data warehouse appliances have hit the market at lower price points, without compromising the power and functionality typically delivered by legacy data warehouse approaches. These new appliances come in different configurations and with different pricing models, and with some, more than a small amount of specialized expertise is needed to get the solution up and running in order to achieve true business value. Small and midsize organizations as well as specialized departments and workgroups in larger enterprises should seek out tightly integrated, affordable, all-in-one data warehouse appliances that offer easy, fast deployment and rapid time to value. Solutions such as the Dell Quickstart are a great way to bring affordable yet highly functional data warehousing to organizations that previously might have been blocked from deploying this important technology because of pricing, manpower or specialized expertise requirements. 5