Press Release: Centralized Data Architectures on the Way Out?

PRESS RELEASE – WÜRZBURG, September 20th, 2022

BARC (Business Application Research Center) releases the results of its new topical survey The Future of Data Architecture – Has the Data Warehouse Had Its Day? This survey-based report offers insights into today’s most promising data architecture and data modeling approaches. The study is available for download free of charge thanks to sponsorship by Precisely, TimeXtender, Denodo and Databricks.

  • – Key Finding #1: The most successful companies favor the data lakehouse approach
  • – Key Finding #2: Business user empowerment must go to the next level

Centralized vs. decentralized

Most companies continue to apply tried-and-tested concepts such as the data warehouse design paradigm for their data landscapes. Best-in-class companies favor the data lakehouse approach. However, executives and business users in particular criticize the fact that centralized approaches cannot prevent the emergence of further data silos.

“We recommend that companies work towards a federated overall architecture in which data virtualization and distributed data pipelining and orchestration are options and the framework for this is in place,” said Jacqueline Bloemen, Senior BARC Analyst and co-author of the report. “As the quantity and volume of distributed data sources increase, data architecture concepts that are exclusively centrally oriented quickly reach their limits.”

Which data architecture and data modeling approaches will be important for your future data & analytics landscape?

Which data architecture and data modeling approaches will be important for your future data & analytics landscape? (all: n=260; BIC: n=78)
© BARC 2022

 Business user empowerment must go to the next level

Providing self-service analytics tools to the business has picked up speed, and only a minority of users finds that the tools available to them are too technical. However, the data landscape is a limiting factor in many cases. Because data warehouses frequently do not meet business needs, data for analysis must be tediously gathered from various sources. But still, initiatives in the direction of a data catalog – including suitable data documentation and self-service data preparation – are not widespread.

“Best-in-class companies realize the importance of enabling business users to work with data as and when required,” said Timm Grosser, Senior BARC Analyst and co-author of the report. “However, they do not always support this properly, for example, by providing the right data documentation and the appropriate tools. Data & analytics teams must embrace this reality and shape it more consciously in the future.”

What challenges do data users in your company face? (n=260) © BARC 2022

What challenges do data users in your company face? (n=260)
© BARC 2022

About the survey

“The Future of Data Architecture – Has the Data Warehouse Had Its Day?” is a BARC market research study that examines today’s most promising data architecture and data modeling approaches. It is based on a worldwide survey of 268 companies of various sizes and industries. The authors of the study are BARC Analysts Jacqueline Bloemen and Timm Grosser.

Click here for more information and to download the full study.

About BARC

BARC (Business Application Research Center) is one of Europe’s leading analyst firms for business software, focusing on the areas of data, business intelligence (BI) and analytics, enterprise content management (ECM) and customer relationship management (CRM). The company was founded in 1999 as a spin-off of the Chair of Business Administration and Information Systems at the Julius-Maximilians-University in Würzburg. Today, BARC combines empirical and theoretical research, technical expertise and practical experience, including a constant exchange with all market participants.

Contact

For all enquiries and further information, please contact:

Axel Bange
Tel: +49 (0) 2331 356 93 95
Email: abange@barc.de