Data warehousing not cloud-ready

Johannesburg, 11 Sept 2009

The idea of cloud computing proved to be a hot topic at the ITWeb Data Warehousing conference held in Midrand, this week, and was marked as a major challenge within the data warehousing space.

Ryan Jamieson, director at IS Partners; Keith Jones, MD of Harvey Jones; and Barry Devlin, founder of 9sight Consulting, discussed the future of data warehousing and challenges in the field in a session focusing on the future of the industry.

Devlin said the cloud can be of great use, but in SA there are still many limitations to using cloud computing as a reliable solution for data warehousing. “The cloud can work with high-level connectivity, such as in the US and some places in Europe, but if you can't get to the cloud quickly and securely, it doesn't work.”

Jamieson believes two major challenges exist with regards to the cloud; one being, as Devlin notes, connectivity. However, he not only referred to Internet bandwidth speeds, but also internal connectivity speeds over organisations' networks, apart from the hosted solutions.

The second challenge, according to Jamieson, is “the trust factor”.

“Do you trust your vendor with your data and information, and importantly, the country where your data is stored in the cloud?” Jamieson said various countries' laws and regulations differ extensively, and depending on the strictness regarding transparency and access in various countries, the cloud may not be a good option.

Jones argued that from a business intelligence perspective, which he described as the complete process of data gathering, transformation and dissemination, the industry is not ready for the cloud, especially in SA. “Our cloud at the moment shows more mist than a cloud,” he said.

Devlin and Jones agreed that time-to-value within the data warehouse arena is key, but Devlin said time-to-truth is more important. He argued that the success of the data warehousing solution relies on getting to a single version of the truth and one answer to a business question.

This, Devlin believes, goes hand-in-hand with consistency, and the focus needs to be on achieving timely and consistent data, something he doesn't think cloud computing offers locally yet.