The global data storage market grew from $27.93 billion in 2022 to $31.85 billion in 2023, with a cumulative annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.0%. It is expected to reach $53.8 billion by 2027. These figures highlight the importance and high demand for digital repositories.
To effectively manage data, ensuring their availability, integrity, and security, specialized data warehouse tools are utilized. With many options in the market, choosing the best solution for a project can be challenging.
DB Serv experts have prepared an article emphasizing the significance and advantages of data warehouse tools, guiding on how to choose and utilize them correctly. Additionally, we have collected the top choices in the market so you can easily find something that fits your needs.
Introduction to Data Warehouse Tools
Before delving into the specifics of a data warehousing tool and a list of top solutions, let's first understand what they are.
What Are Data Warehouse Tools and Why Do We Use Them?
Data warehouse tools are software applications or platforms that streamline collecting, storing, managing, and analyzing large volumes of data from various sources such as databases, spreadsheets, cloud services, and IoT devices.
The primary goal of a data warehouse is to facilitate users in extracting and analyzing data.
Key Considerations for Choosing the Right Data Warehouse Tool
It's important to choose the right tool to get the most out of your data warehouse. First, decide whether you need a cloud-based or on-premises repository before beginning your search.
If you require a cost-effective yet efficient solution without the need for additional servers, hardware, and maintenance fees, a cloud data warehouse would be the preferred option.
For companies where data security is a top priority, opting for an on-premises data warehouse is preferable. It allows for complete control over data security and access. However, such a solution is economically inefficient and requires significant maintenance costs.
Cloud vs. On-Premise Data Warehousing
As mentioned earlier, it is necessary to decide on the type to make a justified choice of a data warehousing tool. However, not every entrepreneur knows which option suits their project – cloud-based or on-premises. Let's go through the advantages and disadvantages of each so that you can choose the most suitable option.
Pros and Cons of Cloud-Based Data Warehouses
So, what benefits can you gain from using cloud-based storage?
- ➡️ Cost Optimization. Maintaining personal data storage systems is a significant expense for any company. Choosing a cloud-based warehouse can significantly reduce operational costs and forget about capital expenses forever.
- ➡️ Resilience. Engineers with specialized experience maintain cloud storage. The server infrastructure and necessary software are regularly updated. To ensure data safety, clients are offered twice as much space as the actual size of the files they intend to store in the cloud.
- ➡️ Accessibility. Cloud storage allows users to access and share data on any device, regardless of its location. Such connectivity enhances collaborative work efficiency and ensures business productivity and flexibility.
- ➡️ Scalability. This is the ability to expand the storage capacity as your business grows, along with the increase in data volume and workload. Similarly, companies can quickly and easily scale down their operations.
Despite numerous advantages, cloud storage has some drawbacks that need to be considered for the most effective use. Among the most common ones are:
- ➡️ The Need for a Stable Internet Connection. For seamless work with data in the cloud, you will require a fast and stable internet connection; otherwise, you simply won't have access to it.
- ➡️ Security and Confidentiality Issues. Cloud storage may be subject to some threats, such as data loss. This is usually associated with incorrect security system settings or choosing an unreliable provider of services.
- ➡️ Unforeseen Circumstances on the Provider's Side. Issues in handling data due to equipment failures, provider outages, or other reasons cannot be ruled out. This is why having a backup strategy is crucial.
For the proper configuration and effective organization of storing a large amount of data, the assistance of an expert in these matters may be needed.
Advantages and Disadvantages of On-Premise Data Warehousing
Unlike cloud-based solutions, on-premise storage is built on the infrastructure within your company's office. You will own all the equipment and manage its life cycle.
Local solutions offer the following benefits for businesses:
- ➡️ Independence from the Internet. No network connection is required to access data. Local storage provides an internal network accessible at all times, regardless of internet connectivity.
- ➡️ High Security. The solution is only accessible to authorized personnel. The storage is closed for those outside the network since it does not store data online. This means that company employees cannot work remotely with the required information at any time.
- ➡️ Full Control. The ability to independently modify server hardware can give companies greater flexibility to tailor it to their individual data storage needs.
However, there are drawbacks to using such an option:
- ➡️ High Costs. When setting up a local storage system, you will have to invest a significant amount in purchasing servers and other equipment to get it up and running. Additionally, ongoing expenses are necessary for buying hardware, software, and licenses for system updates or repairs.
- ➡️ Risk of Data Loss. When using local storage, a system failure can lead to irreversible data loss since the data is stored on an internal server. Avoid this by including off-site backup services.
- ➡️ Limited Scalability. If your company is growing and requires more storage space or other features, you cannot quickly scale the local storage. It involves the installation of new equipment and the involvement of labor to create new systems.
Additionally, when choosing such a solution, consider that there may be risks of blurred responsibility for incidents in the event of emergencies or failures, etc.
Important Functions of Data Warehousing Tools
For a data warehousing tool to provide proper management, analysis, and efficient use of information, it must have robust functionality. The first and foremost task of the tool is to extract information from all existing sources in the company, such as customer databases.
Let's take a closer look at the other functions.
Data Cleansing
Many companies use warehouses to leverage accumulated information for critical business decisions. Therefore, only high-quality data must be loaded into the warehouse. You can accomplish this through data cleansing. By doing so, you can identify and remove incomplete or outdated records from the original datasets.
Data Transformation and Loading
Transformation involves changing data into a format compatible with the target system, such as a database, to facilitate their loading.
Many data warehouse tools offer built-in transformation features, including aggregation, search, merging, and filtering, to optimize the data integration stage in the warehouse. Integrated information ensures a comprehensive data profile and is used for effective analysis.
Data and Metadata Management
The presence of this function in data warehousing tools plays a crucial role in ensuring integrity, compliance with requirements, and effective management through policies, processes, and control mechanisms. It includes quality monitoring, tracking origin, implementing security measures, and adhering to confidentiality rules.
Moreover, proper data and metadata management are vital for ensuring information transparency, reliability, and compliance. It enables companies to maintain accurate and consistent data, comply with regulatory requirements, and make informed decisions.
Business Analytics and Data Analysis
Data warehouses and business analytics (BI) are two distinct but closely interconnected functions that help businesses make better decisions. In the digital era, organizations have vast raw information typically stored in a warehouse. It's crucial for data warehouse tools to have BI functions that facilitate data discovery and generate business insights.
Criteria for Choosing a Data Warehouse Tool
To select the best tools for data warehousing for your project, it is necessary to consider a number of factors. Let's look at the most important ones.
Performance and Scalability
Data warehouse tools provide different levels of performance. Choose a solution that guarantees data cleansing, duplicate elimination, proper transformation, and loading. This way, you can achieve maximum efficiency for your warehouse.
Additionally, a good data warehousing tool should scale as the volume of data and workload increases.
Integrations and Compatibility
These are two key aspects to consider when choosing a data warehousing tool. They ensure proper interaction between the chosen solution and other systems, applications, and technologies in the organization.
Successful integrations and cross-platform compatibility allow for more flexible use of data, ensure consistency of information across different systems, and contribute to creating a unified source of information for business analytics.
Use Cases and Applications
No matter how powerful a data warehousing tool is, it must be adapted to your company's needs. Some data warehouse tools excel in handling large volumes of data, while others are effective with smaller datasets.
Consider the nature of the data you will be dealing with. If they are currently stored in different systems or formats, prefer a data warehousing tool capable of handling growing complexity.
Moreover, the data warehousing tool should meet the specific requirements of applications. For example, machine learning applications may require specialized features such as support for distributed learning.
In addition to the listed criteria, it is essential to consider the specific needs and goals of the company.
Top 9 Data Warehouse Tools in 2024
Choosing the right data warehousing tool that aligns with established business goals and constraints is not a simple task. There are numerous options, each with its own pros and cons.
To facilitate your search, we have selected 9 top data warehouse tools that can optimize your company's workflows.
1. Snowflake
A cloud platform offering a fully managed and scalable solution for storing, processing, and analyzing data.
Key Features:
- ✅ Enables real-time data sharing and collaboration within your business ecosystem.
- ✅ Automatically scales with increasing workloads and data volumes, optimizing costs as the load decreases.
- ✅ Utilizes various optimization methods such as automatic indexing and caching to speed up query execution.
Snowflake is suitable for organizations of all types, including technologically advanced companies, analytical teams, and enterprises with diverse data processing needs.
2. SAP Data Warehouse Cloud
A comprehensive data warehousing tool that allows data specialists seamless and scalable access to critical business information.
Key Features:
- ✅ Integrates data from a wide range of sources, including local databases, cloud applications, spreadsheets, and more.
- ✅ Cloud storage has a semantic layer that abstracts complex structures, providing a user-friendly data representation for business users.
- ✅ Enables running specialized queries, creating reports, and visualizations using integrated business analytics tools.
- ✅ Offers a drag-and-drop interface for creating data models, defining relationships, and building hierarchies without extensive coding.
SAP Data Warehouse Cloud provides numerous capabilities for data storage, management, and analysis, making it suitable for a broad spectrum of organizations, especially those already using SAP products or cloud solutions.
3. Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse (ADW)
A cloud tool that eliminates the complexities of building warehouses, ensures information security, and aids in developing data-driven applications.
Key Features:
- ✅ Supports data integration and ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes with built-in data loading and transformation functions.
- ✅ Supports various types and data models, including relational, JSON, spatial, and graph data, making it versatile for different analytical requirements.
- ✅ A fully managed service, handling infrastructure provisioning, configuration, patching, backups, and other administrative tasks.
Oracle ADW is an optimal solution for various use cases, particularly for companies valuing automation and high performance and considering data warehouse technologies as part of their IT strategy.
4. Amazon Redshift
A fully managed cloud data warehouse designed for storing and analyzing large volumes of data using SQL queries and business analytics tools such as Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, and others.
Key Features:
- ✅ Automates many administrative tasks required for monitoring, managing, and scaling data warehouses.
- ✅ Intelligent features, including high-performance computing, parallelization, unified query optimization, and columnar storage, enable the execution of complex analytical queries.
- ✅ Allows flexible scaling of data according to capacity and performance requirements.
- ✅ Comprises nodes (computational resources) organized into clusters, with Redshift clusters constantly monitored, data from failed disks automatically replicated, and nodes replaced as needed.
Amazon Redshift is an ideal solution for businesses focused on high performance, data scalability, and leveraging cloud computing in their operations.
5. Microsoft Azure
A cloud platform providing the ability to develop, run applications, and store data on servers located in distributed data centers.
Key Features:
- ✅ Facilitates easy data movement and genuine platform compatibility with on-premises and public clouds.
- ✅ Offers various cross-connection options, including VPN, caching, and content delivery network (CDN), to enhance performance and user experience.
- ✅ Azure App is a fully managed web hosting service enabling the creation of web apps, RESTful APIs, and services.
- ✅ Unlike most cloud services, Azure has numerous data processing centers and delivery points, allowing faster data delivery and ensuring an optimal user experience.
Microsoft Azure is beneficial for various corporations, enterprises, IT departments, developers, and companies prioritizing data security, data storage, and analytics.
6. Teradata
A data storage and analytics platform designed to handle large volumes of information and support complex analytical workloads.
Key Features:
- ✅ Capable of storing and processing information from multiple servers simultaneously, making it compatible with various types of big data.
- ✅ Data is categorized into "hot" and "cold," with "cold" representing rarely used data and "hot" indicating frequently used data.
- ✅ With a straightforward navigation system and a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI), business users can easily utilize the system with basic training.
- ✅ Offers many powerful data processing utilities, including FastLoad, MultiLoad, FastExport, and TPT.
Teradata is suitable for companies emphasizing analytical capabilities, processing large data volumes, and requiring high performance.
7. Hevo Data
A cloud data integration platform designed to optimize the process of collecting, transforming, and loading data into warehouses and other destinations.
Key Features:
- ✅ Wide range of ready-made connectors and integrations for collecting data from various sources, including databases, cloud applications, file systems, and more.
- ✅ Visual interface for cleansing and transforming data as it flows into the data warehouse.
- ✅ Includes data quality features to help identify and address issues while extracting, transforming, and loading data.
Hevo Data provides an intuitively understandable data warehousing tool that is beneficial for organizations seeking to streamline their information processing processes.
8. Astera Data Warehouse Builder
Flexible tool used for creating local and cloud data warehouses. It represents a unified platform that simplifies and automates all information storage processes, from design and development to deployment and hosting.
Key Features:
- ✅ Built-in native connectors supporting seamless integration with popular databases, web applications, and leading cloud service providers such as Amazon, Azure cloud, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Vertica, Google Cloud, Salesforce, HubSpot, SAP Hana, and others.
- ✅ ETL and ELT engines with advanced capabilities for efficiently processing large volumes of data and optimizing query performance.
- ✅ Data modeling capability takes schema into account, and intuitive no-code development features significantly reduce the time to put the warehouse into operation, accelerating deployment.
- ✅ Comprehensive data model validation module ensuring accuracy and integrity of information throughout the storage process.
- ✅ The unified architecture integrates structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data from various sources, providing a holistic understanding of information.
Astera DWB provides a wide range of functional capabilities, making the tool suitable for various organizations aiming for effective data management.
9. Panoply
Cloud platform that enables users to create a data warehouse architecture, eliminating the need to build and maintain their own local repository.
Key Features:
- ✅ Built-in connectors enable data retrieval from various sources.
- ✅ Built-in scheduler automates the data storage and processing process.
- ✅ Data transformation capabilities allow data cleansing, transformation, and enrichment using SQL, Python, or other programming languages.
- ✅ Columnar storage format optimizing query performance.
Panoply can be beneficial for any business, including companies involved in data collection and analytics.
Conclusion: Navigating the Data Warehouse Landscape in 2024
Storage is a crucial component of modern businesses, regardless of their scale or industry. It enables companies to efficiently store and utilize their data, including making more informed decisions and building strategies based on that data.
The landscape of data management is rapidly evolving due to technological innovations, shifts in entrepreneurs' priorities, and the growing complexity of dealing with information. Therefore, it is essential to choose data warehouse tools that will meet the specific needs of your company and remain relevant in an ever-changing data environment.
If you have trouble, DB Serv experts can help you choose a data storage tool. It will benefit your business by providing a competitive edge in the target market.