What Does Enterprise Data Warehouse Mean?
An enterprise data warehouse is a unified database that holds all the business information an organization produces and makes it accessible to employees across the company. Although there are many interpretations of what makes an data warehouse enterprise-class, the following features are often included:
- A unified approach to aggregating, normalizing and sharing data.
- The ability to classify data according to subject and grant access privileges according to job role.
- A high level of security that supports the principle of least privilege (PoLP).
- A high level of scalability.
- A robust infrastructure with contingency plans for business continuance in the event information and communication technology (ICT) services are disrupted.
Techopedia Explains Enterprise Data Warehouse
The primary attraction of creating and managing an enterprise data warehouse is to ensure that an organization's data is always available for analyzing and planning purposes.
The alternative is for a business to have a series of different databases (called data marts) for each major branch office or organizational division. The problem with this approach is that it creates data silos and can makes data integration more difficult for employees engaged in analytics and high level planning.
The challenge is to provide employees with access to the data they need to do their jobs — without compromising the security and integrity of the organization's data. Data warehouse governance frameworks can be used to create policies that impose a standard treatment of data that can grow with a business’s needs.
