At WhereScape we have started to be asked about data warehousing in the cloud. Currently the questions we are fielding are primarily relating to the cloud as infrastructure, rather than on models for enterprise data warehousing in the cloud. While the models for cloud based data warehousing are still being developed, it can still make sense today to share data and information in the cloud, which serves a data warehouse as a source or target.
For instance, common supplier information could be shared across the cloud and used as a source for a data warehouse. Other examples include small, specialized data marts that need to be shared across geographically distributed sales forces or departments. Using cloud services is particularly attractive for smaller and mid-sized organizations to build a data warehouse that can be accessed globally without the cost of building a local infrastructure.
This whitepaper discusses how WhereScape RED can be successfully integrated into the cloud using the cloud database services Microsoft SQL Azure and Amazon Cloud Services.