TrendMove to active data warehousing requires creation of dual systems
Used to be the case that large amounts of business data were warehoused for strategic business purposes; now many businesses use active warehousing of data, so the data may be used for tactical, more immediate planning; this means if the data get lost, the debilitating effect on business is that much greater
IT systems’ downtime costs American businesses a million dollars an hour according to the META group. This figure is not surprising considering the degree to which modern businesses rely on IT systems. Much of the value of these systems is derived from the mountains of business intelligence stored in today’s sophisticated data warehouses. There is a difference, though: Companies which once used their data warehouse only to support strategic business analysis are now using active data warehousing to support nearly every core business function. This is where the problem is: If companies rely more and more on active data warehousing, then it is not surprising that when the system is unavailable, companies are at enormous financial risk. Lost revenue, reduced employee productivity, and regulatory penalties all contribute to direct costs and the reputation of the business.
The best solution for this problem is to have two production systems which are both up, operational, and available to manage routine workloads. Using this configuration, the second system is also available if the first system becomes unavailable or the system’s performance is degraded. This type of configuration is commonly referred to as a “dual system.”
-read more in this Domain-B discussion
