A cloud analytics platform is a solution that combines multiple analytic functions, including data acquisition, storage and analysis, offered in the cloud, often as a fully managed service. Cloud analytic platforms are attractive to businesses because they can be deployed quickly and cost-effectively without the need for in-house expertise. They are also easy to scale as business requirements evolve.
What are the advantages of a cloud-based data analytics platform?
Traditionally, analytics environments are deployed on-premises and have multiple expensive components. Organizations would typically purchase separate enterprise software for functions such as data integration, data warehousing and business intelligence. Each component typically ran on its own server and storage infrastructure that was expensive to acquire and required specialized skills to deploy and maintain.
Managing storage infrastructure is a particular challenge for organizations deploying analytic environments. Aside from the data center management challenges, on-premises infrastructure is inflexible. Sourcing, acquiring and installing infrastructure could take months, so organizations would typically purchase more infrastructure than they required, anticipating future growth. Businesses tend to make capital acquisitions and depreciate IT assets over multiple years, making it all but impossible to react quickly to changing business needs.
Cloud-based data analytics platforms deliver the data analytics capabilities and functionality businesses are looking to implement, include operational maintenance and can scale to support future business growth. In addition, cloud-based data analytics platforms offer predictability of cost and can be ideal for organizations where IT resources are limited.
Why move to a cloud-based analytics platform?
Over the past decade, many enterprise applications have shifted to the cloud. Many organizations now run critical business applications such as sales force automation and enterprise resource planning entirely in the cloud using software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings from Salesforce, Oracle, SAP and others. As core applications move to the cloud, it increasingly makes sense to host analytic platforms there as well. Compute and storage resources in the cloud have been highly cost-effective. Enterprise users pay for only the resources they need.
The shift to the cloud provides organizations with an excellent opportunity to modernize their analytics infrastructure. Rather than simply replicating costly and complex on-premises data warehouse and ETL environments in the cloud, organizations can take advantage of more capable cloud analytics platforms. These cloud-native environments utilize the latest technologies, including optimized columnar file formats and in-memory query engines to deliver excellent performance and self-service data.
Incorta cloud analytics platform
Incorta Cloud is a state-of-the-art cloud analytics platform that enables users to spin up a world-class data analysis platform in a matter of minutes without assistance from IT. It provides a complete, end-to-end platform that can interface with virtually any data source on premises or in the cloud. Using Incorta Cloud, organizations can reduce cost, simplify their environments, and significantly improve the effectiveness of their analytics and easily scale up and down as requirements change for better business results.