Living in Queensland, I spend plenty of time at the beach and like to sneak in a dawn surf as frequently as possible.  When the swell is from the south east, the current really picks up, it's common to get swept hundreds of metres down the beach.  This morning was one of those mornings. After almost an hour of paddling and feeling my shoulders starting to burn, I distinctly remember telling myself ‘wow, this feels just like work'.

As a data professional, all the talk surrounding the growth in both complexity and volumes of data has left me a little numbed, and I have started to tune it out a bit. Yet, the numbers are staggering and we no longer challenge the trends. Faced with this oncoming tide of data, it often feels like you are paddling against the current.  

There are many respected sources that predict exponential data growth toward 2020 and well beyond. They are all in broad agreement that the size of the digital universe will double every two years at least, this represents a 50-fold growth from 2010 to 2020.

But it's not just the volumes. Even more importantly, there has been a shift to new and agile business models. Data warehouses now serve businesses with demands that are completely different from when they were conceived.

If you established your data warehouse in 2010, then it is now dealing with a 50-fold increase in volume and attempting to serve a completely different business model from when it was conceived.  Growing data volumes and the need to support new agile business methodologies have a compounding effect that can easily overwhelm all your efforts to hold your position and keep your head above water.

Faced with this challenge, you have to ask yourself; can any data warehouse ever be expected to keep up with the changing tides of business? 

Data Vault 2.0 versus traditional data warehouses 

Data warehouses are not all made the same, and it’s critical for business leaders to know where there are pivotal differences.

Enterprise data warehouses are typically structured to be ‘personnel heavy' which slows the process of data ingestion and ad hoc business reporting. And the real-world challenge that faces organisations, particularly those which are data-intensive, means even relatively modest-sized businesses are struggling to house, understand and leverage the data they are working with.   

On the other hand, the Data Vault 2.0 architecture focuses on business agility by providing a low entry cost with automated ETL (extract, transform, load) generation, and automated maintenance that reduces ongoing costs. Most importantly, it is scalable and extensible for additional sources and domains of data, with support for both structured and unstructured data.

How are businesses becoming more agile using Data Vault 2.0?

For QSuper, an Australian Superannuation fund based in Brisbane, they had experienced five years of wasted time and resource on an information industry model that wouldn’t work, not to mention a heavy financial cost.

Dan Linstedt, the creator of the Data Vault 2.0 methodology, said their attitude towards data warehousing had completely soured, and they didn’t believe he could help them achieve what they wanted to.

“Inside of six weeks, we had some proof positive that it was possible. Eager to build the right solution, we took business distrust and turned it into trust.

“We could do things that needed to be done for the organisation.”

Pepper Group, a global financial services organisation, has also recognised the considerable changes Data Vault 2.0 has made in their business. They were facing several challenges with their data warehouse’s inability to support their growing business and were looking for a better approach.

“For us, Data Vault 2.0 has provided significant benefits,” says Steven Mellare, Head of Information Management at Pepper.  

“We were able to change our data warehouse whilst minimising the re-engineering costs. Now we have a system that is more closely aligned with the strategic needs of our business, enabling us to deliver projects faster and with fewer defects; therefore, with a significantly lower cost of ownership.”

Other significant successes for Data Vault 2.0 include changing the culture at The Commonwealth Bank, where people were markedly happier - not only in IT but at the business level.  

"We were able to positively impact their collaboration efforts, establishing trust and confidence all the way to the C level," says Linstedt.

"The CFO actually got up in a meeting and said it was the first time in the history of the company that he was able to balance to one-tenth of one per cent, and that he knew where that tenth of a per cent was, because of Data Vault 2.0."

It’s these first-hand customer experiences which continue to improve and evolve the Data Vault technology. So why not become a part of these success stories today?

Download our eBook Unlocking Data Vault 2.0 to understand how Data Vault 2.0 provides a faster, lower-cost and more agile approach to enterprise data management in your business.