Tag Archives: DBA

Cloud, Data Warehouse, Technology

Blended Data Warehouse SW/HW Solutions Phased Into the Cloud

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Relational Database Solutions “In a Box”

Several of the relational database software vendors, such as IBM, Oracle, and Teradata have developed proprietary data warehouse software to be tightly coupled with server hardware to maximize performance.  These solutions have been developed and refined as “on-prem” solutions for many years.

We’ve seen the rise of “Database (DW)  as a Service” from companies like Amazon, who sell Redshift services.

Amazon Redshift is a fast, fully managed data warehouse that makes it simple and cost-effective to analyze all your data using standard SQL and your existing Business Intelligence (BI) tools.  It allows you to run complex analytic queries against petabytes of structured data, using sophisticated query optimization, columnar storage on high-performance local disks, and massively parallel query execution. Most results come back in seconds.

RDB Complex Software/Hardware Maintenance

In recent times, the traditional relational database software vendors shifted gears to become service providers offering maximum performance from a solution hosted by them, the vendor, in the Cloud.    On the positive side, the added complexity of configuring and tuning a blended software/hardware data warehouse has been shifted from the client’s team resources such as Database Administrators (DBAs), Network Administrators,  Unix/Windows Server Admins,… to the database software service provider.  The complexity of tuning for scalability, and other maintenance challenges shifts to the software vendor’s expertise, if that’s the abstraction you select.  There is some ambiguity in the delineation of responsibilities with the RDBMS vendor’s cloud offerings.

Total Cost of Ownership

Quantifying the total cost of ownership of a solution may be a bit tricky, especially if you’re trying to quantify the RDBMS hybrid software/hardware “on-prem” solution versus the same or similar capabilities brought to the client via “Database (DW) as a Service”.

“On-Prem”, RDB Client Hosted Solution

Several factors need to be considered when selecting ANY software and/or Hardware to be hosted at the client site.

  • Infrastructure “when in Rome”
    • Organizations have a quantifiable cost related to hosting physical or virtual servers in the client’s data center and may be boiled down to a number that may include things like HVAC, or new rack space.
    • Resources used to maintain/monitor DC usage, there may be an abstracted/blended figure.
  • Database Administrators maintain and monitor RDB solutions.
    • Activities may range from RDB patches/upgrades to resizing/scaling the DB storage “containers”.
    • Application Database Admins/Developers may be required to maintain the data warehouse architecture, such as new requirements, e.g. creating aggregate tables for BI analysis.
  • Network Administrators
    • Firewalls, VPN
    • Port Scanning
  • Windows/Unix Server Administrators
    • Antivirus
    • OS Patches

Trying to correlate these costs in some type of “Apples to Apples” comparison to the “Data Warehouse as a Service” may require accountants and technical folks to do extensive financial modeling to make the comparison.   Vendors, such as Oracle, offer fully managed services to the opposite end of the spectrum, the “Bare Metal”, essentially the “Infra as a Service.”  The Oracle Exadata solution can be a significant investment depending on the investment in redundancy and scalability leveraging Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC). 

Support and Staffing Models for DW Cloud Vendors

In order for the traditional RDB software vendors to accommodate a “Data Warehouse as a Service” model, they may need to significantly increase staff for a variety of technical disciplines, as outlined above with the Client “On-Prem” model.  A significant ramp-up of staff and the organizational challenges of developing and implementing a support model based on a variety of factors may have relational database vendors ask: Should they leverage a top tier consulting agency such as Accenture, or Deloitte to define, implement, and refine a managed service?  It’s certainly a tall order to go from a software vendor to offering large scale services.  With corporate footprints globally and positive track records implementing managed services of all types, it’s an attractive proposition for both the RDB vendor and the consulting agency who wins the bid.  Looking at the DW Service billing models don’t seem sensical on some level.  Any consulting agency who implements a DW managed service would be responsible to ensure ROI both for the RDS vendor and their clients.  It may be opaque to the end client leveraging the Data Warehouse as a Service, but certainly, the quality of service provided should be nothing less than if implemented by the RDB vendor itself.  If the end game for the RDB vendor is for the consulting agency to implement, and mature the service then at some point bring the service in-house, it could help to keep costs down while maturing the managed service.

Oracle Exadata

Here are URLs for reference to understand the capabilities that are realized through Oracle’s managed services.

https://cloud.oracle.com/en_US/database

https://cloud.oracle.com/en_US/database/exadata/features

https://www.oracle.com/engineered-systems/exadata/index.html

Teradata

https://www.teradata.com/products-and-services/intellicloud

https://www.teradata.com/products-and-services/cloud-overview

Teradata
Teradata

DB2

https://www.ibm.com/cloud/db2-warehouse-on-cloud

IBM Mainframe
IBM Mainframe

Note: The opinions shared here are my own.

Business, Technology

Tablet Developers Make Business Intelligence Tools using Google as a Data Warehouse: Completing with Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft SQL Server

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And, he shoots, and scores.  I called it, sort of.  Google came out of the closet today as a data warehouse vendor, at least they need a community of developers to connect the dots to help build an amazing Business Intelligence suite.

Google came out with a Google Docs API today, which using languages from Objective-C (iOS), C#, to Java so you can use Google as your Data Warehouse for any size business. All you need to do is write an ETL program which uploads and downloads tables from your local database to Google Docs, and you create your own Business Intelligence User Interface for the creation and viewing of Charts & Graphs.  It looks like they’ve changed strategies, or this was the plan all along.

Initially I thought that Google Fusion was going to be the table editing tool to manipulate your data that was transferred from your transactional database using the Google Docs API.  Today they released a Google Docs API and developers can create their own ETL drivers and a Business Intelligence User Interface that can run on any platform from an Android Tablet, iPad, or Windows Tablet.

A few days ago, I wrote the article, which looked like they were going to use a tool called Google Fusion, which was in Beta at the time to manipulate tabular data, and eventually extend it to create common BI components, such as graphs, charts, edit tables, etc.

A few gotchas: Google Docs on Apple iPad is version 1.1.1 released 9/28/12, so we are talking very early days, and the Google Docs API was released today.   I would imagine since you can also use C#, someone can make a Windows application on the desktop to manipulate the data tables, create and view graphs, so a Windows Tablet can be used.  The API also has Java compatibility, so from any Unix box, or any platform, Java is write once, run anywhere, wherever your transitional database lives, a developer is able to write a driver to transfer the data to Google Docs dynamically, and then use Google Docs API for Business Intelligence.  You can even write an ETL driver which all it does is rapidly transfer data, like an ODBC, or JDBC driver and use any business intelligence tools you have on your desktop, or a nightly ETL.  However, I can see developers creating business intelligence tools on Android, iPad, or Windows tables to modify tables, create and view charts, etc., using custom BI tool sets and their data warehouse now becomes Google Docs.

Please reference an article I wrote a few days back, “Google is Going to be the Next Public and Private Data Warehouse“.

At that time, Google Fusion was marked as Beta on 10/13/2012.  Google has since stripped off the word Beta, but doesn’t matter.  Its even better with the Google API to Google Docs.  Google Fusion could be your starter User Interface, however, if your Android, iOS (Apple iPad), and Windows developers really embrace this API, all of the big database companies like IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft may have their market share eroded to some extent, if not a great extent.

Update 10/19:

Hey Gs (Guys and Gals), I forgot to mention, you can also make your own video or music streaming applications perhaps, using the basic calls of get and receive file other companies are already doing such as AWS, Box, etc. It’s a simple get / send API, so not sure if it’s applicable to ‘streaming’ at this stage, just another storage location in the ‘cloud’, which would be quite boring.  Although thinking of it now, aren’t all the put / send cloud solutions potential data warehouses using ETL and the APIs discussed and published above?  Also, it’s ironic that Google would also be competing with itself, if it was a file share, ‘stream’ videos, and YouTube?