A data warehouse is a repository for historical data, which allows analysts to evaluate multiple sources of data to gain actionable insights. A data warehouse can either be installed on premises or in the cloud. The choice you make is based on your business’s requirements and other factors like cost and scalability, security, control and resources.
Data warehouses are made to store large amounts historical enterprise data as well as performing deep data analysis for business intelligence and reporting (BI). They can store both relational and non-relational data. They are usually structured, meaning that the data is loaded and extracted before being transformed in order to conform to predefined schemas prior to being stored. This makes it easier to run queries against them than directly against the operational source system.
The traditional on-premises warehouses require expensive equipment and software to be hosted. Their storage capacity is limited to their compute and they must regularly delete old data in order to keep enough space for the current data. A data warehouse enables users to run historical queries that are not possible using operational systems, as they only refresh using real-time data.
A cloud-based data warehouse, or managed service, is a fully automated and highly performant solution that’s a good choice for companies that require to analyze huge amounts of data over the course of. It is often a better alternative to on-premises data warehouses because it eliminates the need for large servers and provides a variety of pricing options, including pay per throughput or per hour of usage, or with a fixed price for a specific amount of resources.