The drums are beating, proclaiming that the death of data warehousing is just around the corner. In Gartner's 2013 tech trends press release they wrote that Big Data was "leading organizations to abandon the concept of a single enterprise data warehouse containing all information needed for decisions."

So what is Big Data from a high level? Big Data is data that's too large, too dispersed, and too unstructured to be managed using conventional information storage systems. It is fueled by the enormous amounts of information generated by the Internet-and tends to be more real-time in nature. The potential intelligence that can be gathered from these new sources, especially for certain types of companies, is very enticing. However, the vast majority of traditional data being organized for business intelligence and analytics is still coming from traditional data warehousing. The data warehouse is not dead, it's now just another legacy system.  

Most of the "data warehouse is irrelevant" noise is coming from Big Data vendors and marketers. Big Data, or any data for that matter, should be extracted and visualized from all correct sources, including data warehouses, data marts, or any other corporate data silos, including external data sources. Some of today's analytical tools and visualization products are reducing the warehouse's role as the overall data repository. That's not a problem unless you let it become a problem. Companies need to gather and analyze all the information sources that are relevant, regardless of where or how they are stored. Big Data is different than data stored in the traditional data warehouse. That does not mean that they are not complementary.

Over the years the subject of whether a single corporate data warehouse for the enterprise was a sound strategy or not has been soundly debated. The reality is that no matter how centralized you wanted things to be, data stores popped up everywhere. Today's desktop and mobile visualization tools make the desire for data access even stronger and the ability to keep things centralized nearly impossible. Big Data just adds to the complexity (and excitement) of this new world of data for everyone and on all platforms.

The bottom line. Instead of declaring the enterprise data warehouse dead because of Big Data, we should view it as a tremendous opportunity for improved intelligence value as the result of multiple platforms complementing-not competing-with each other. These two platforms are very different in terms of vendor technologies, data types, business drivers, system architectures, operational procedures, and skills required. But as a good friend of mine says to me a lot, "it's all good." And it will keep a lot of people employed for a long time.

Steven Crofts, Director of Marketing at StatSlice Systems