What is an Enterprise Datawarehouse?

An enterprise data warehouse (EDW) is a database, or collection of databases, that centralizes business information from multiple sources and applications, and makes it available for analytics and use across the organization. EDWs can be hosted on-premises Server or on the cloud.

The data stored in this type of digital warehouse can be one of a business’s most valuable assets, as it represents much of what is known about the business, its employees, its customers, and more.

Advantages of organizing an EDW

The maintenance of an enterprise data warehouse solution is advantageous to an organization for many different reasons. Commonly, this kind of data collection and storage is thought of from a marketing or customer relations perspective, and that is certainly one piece of the puzzle. 

That is not the only utility of a data warehouse, however. It can also help to make sense of seemingly random pieces of data which are coming into the organization through various inputs, and it can save valuable time by aggregating that information automatically. Organizations are likely to be better positioned for future growth when their data is organized in such a systemic, automated fashion.

Structuring your data

Even for businesses that operate on a relatively small scale, organization and structure are extremely important when it comes to building and maintaining an EDW. For the data to be useful, it must be stored in a logical, consistent manner. Knowing where you can look for what data, and be sure that the data returned is accurate, is a huge part of the task.