The world is changing and it is changing fast. Nowadays, you have to be keyed in on the latest technological advancements in order to make sure that your business or service stays competitive. What does this mean? Well, it means that there are new ways to embrace data being released every single day, seemingly, and in order to keep succeeding you need to be apprised of what these new methods do. Today, we are going to be underscoring the importance of a new data-driven concept known as the data lake. What is the data lake? What is it good for? We’re glad that you asked, let’s begin.
Importance Of The Data Lake
A data lake is a unique, information-driven concept. A data lake is, essentially, a centralized place where all of your collected data is stored, irrespective of the content or format of said content. Typically, data lakes can be derived in an unstructured or structured environment. With a data lake in place, your business or service will be able to dig through the information in order to make the best use of it possible. For businesses that rely on being able to reach targeted demographics, this data lake is incredibly important. With that being said, there is more to an enterprise data lake than meets the eye.
Data lakes are not the only kind of digital information repositories being embraced by the digital world. We’ve also seen the rise of the enterprise data warehouse, often shortened just to ‘EDW’. An enterprise data warehouse gets data sent to its source via a wide array of different applications. The data is fed into the EDW is sourced from many different environments but before it can be added to the EDW, it is structured into a new schema. In comparison to the traditional data lake, the enterprise data warehouse is more akin to a processing center for information.
Data lakes are ideal for businesses that operate via the internet because they can take in information that is still in its standard form. There is no processing or adaptation underscoring the data that is being sent to the lake. Why is this such a big deal? Well, it’s pretty simple if you consider the fact that efficiency is everything. Data lakes allow for a constant influx of important business data. This data is not transformed nor is it re-structured upon entering the lake. Instead, the data lake remains flexible and always ready for analysis. Analysts will be able to immediately wade through the data in order to find their own conclusions and forms of data enhancement.
With a raw pool of information in a place that is related to your industry, you’ll be able to query the data in whatever way you please. By approaching data lakes as a subset of your marketing environment, you’ll be able to take full advantage of the technology. Data lakes can be immensely helpful for businesses operating in the modern digital environment.
