Running ThinkData’s Platform with Vertica means sharing data more securely through a flexible and performant warehouse.
We built our external data catalog to deploy on any architecture and connect to any source of data, whether that means integrating with internal servers or setting up remote connections to external databases.
The platform’s flexibility came from our background working with, managing, and productizing external data, which taught us that you can’t expect data to always be where you want it to be, but you should be able to use it no matter where it is.
When we deploy our platform on a client’s infrastructure, we work with them to configure the deployment to their needs, set up their preferred storage, and connect (both physically and virtually) to their warehouse or warehouses.
The platform integrates seamlessly, so we don’t have a preference when it comes to what cloud or server or toolkit our clients use. Because we want our users to use more data with less friction, it is our job to make the platform fit into and enhance their environment, not redesign their environment to work with our platform.
Solutions made for data users
We don’t just build the tech – we are also users of our data catalog. Over time, we’ve integrated with a number of different services and software, testing performance, reliability, scalability, customer service, and cost to see which tools we prefer to work with. This has given us valuable insight into how to configure an environment to satisfy unique business requirements, and how to best set up a deployment to meet the needs of the end user.
Because of our experience with what’s out there, we are often asked to recommend architecture that enhances data discovery and analysis as easily as it enforces metadata management and data governance or enables data sharing and monetization.
When we are given the opportunity to define an infrastructure build, we recommend Vertica.
ThinkData Works and Vertica
Vertica is a world-class database company that offers a unified analytics platform serving the broadest set of functions, from pattern matching to in-database machine learning.
A video from Vertica highlighting Vertica Accelerator
Because they support both on-prem and public cloud deployments, Vertica provides a degree of flexibility that benefits our users who are connecting to data from hundreds of sources internal and external to their business.
Here are some of the reasons Vertica is our first-line warehousing solution:
A flexible service architecture – fully managed or self-managed
A fully managed service is an attractive prospect for many organizations, as it removes the overhead of internal database management and maintenance. But what you gain in freedom you lose in control, and the runaway cost of these engagements can quickly outstrip the benefits you get from them. Vertica is deployable as a fully managed service or self-managed, which gives users the performance they want without having to sacrifice the fine-grained control they need.
This is important when working with external data because it allows organizations to control access, infrastructure, monitoring, and configuration. Changing underlying architecture or levels of security in a fully managed service means contacting and depending on a third party. While this may be easier and more convenient for some companies, it’s typically more expensive and may not meet more stringent security requirements. Vertica’s flexibility as a service provider means not having to choose between white-glove service and custom configuration.
Supports on-prem, cloud, or hybrid models
As long as there are organizations with mission critical or sensitive data, there will be a need for the local data centre. Legacy organizations with large on-prem architectures shouldn’t be limited in what they can do just because their data isn’t portable, and security shouldn’t be a hindrance to modernization.
When we talk to organizations about deploying an external data catalog, we can’t say the first step is migrating your entire database to a public cloud. While there are benefits and drawbacks to private vs. public cloud that every organization must weigh for themselves, there cannot be hard limits on what they can do with their data based on their choice of database.
Just because a company uses a local data centre doesn’t mean they can’t see the writing on the wall that enriching their internal data with external data is a huge competitive advantage. The types of companies that maintain on-prem software are often large, data-centric organizations with a well-defined idea of what they can accomplish with increased access to external data. Any solution to this problem has to be able to work for organizations using any type of software.
Vertica’s flexibility makes it a clear choice for our enterprise clients – maintain full control over your data residency and warehousing while reaping the performance and scaling benefits of modern database technology.
Built to address the most demanding big data analytics initiatives
If you’re serious about data analysis and machine learning, choosing a database that delivers the scale and performance you need is critical. By integrating easily into enterprise and big data environments, Vertica delivers speed, reliability, and a broad range of consumption models to support teams using any BI or visualization tools. For modern organizations, data infrastructure needs to be a sandbox and a warehouse in equal measure.
The ThinkData Marketplace hosts and manages over 250,000 datasets from thousands of sources all over the world. This represents trillions of data points that our clients run against their internal data to enrich their data practices.
Instead of offering static downloads, the ThinkData Marketplace is a way to access to consistently updating data streaming from thousands of sources.
The goal of finding new sources of data is not to know that it exists, but to use it – add it into models, enhance your dashboards, and power your data science division. When connecting to new sources of data, whether these are in the public realm or sourced from trusted data partners, the goal should be to leverage software and tools that help you perform complex analysis immediately.
As the warehouse backbone of a deployment, Vertica’s performance and scalability allows the ThinkData Platform to deliver data to your teams quickly, efficiently, and securely. Taking data from anywhere and allowing your team to share data easily is a cornerstone of effective data use – a warehouse like Vertica makes that easier to manage than ever.
The Verdict
Ultimately, the goal of your data infrastructure should be to enhance core business functions without impeding performance, exposing you to risk, or breaking the bank. The reality is that modern data infrastructure has to allow more flexibility than before, and a lot of forward-thinking organizations are looking at ways to get more out of their data without having to completely restructure their teams, tools, and workflows.
Deploying our external data management platform on Vertica provides our clients with the best, most secure way to blend internal and external data and share that data across their organizations and beyond.
Interested in seeing the benefits of deploying the ThinkData Platform with Vertica? Reach out to us to book a demo.
