Data platforms

Make data accessible for all

With our data platforms, we provide more than just technical solutions. We offer a comprehensive approach that covers data integration, quality control, and automation. This means clients can focus on making informed decisions rather than spending valuable time on manual data management.

Implementing a data platform is a game-changer for businesses. It streamlines data operations, boosts flexibility, and ensures cost-effectiveness. It enables self-service data access, empowering users without technical expertise to harness insights. Collaboration becomes seamless, and better business decisions are made based on factual data, driving a data-driven culture within the organization.

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What is a data platform?

Data is everywhere and increasingly affects more and more of companies processes and business processes. The handling of the enormous amounts of data, as well as the growing business need for the application of data, can be a big challenge for many companies. As a result, data can feel like a costly burden – rather than a value creator, which supports better business decisions and creates deeper customer and market insights.

In short, a data platform is a combination of a number of tools that give companies the opportunity to collect, save, process, analyze and access data in a structured and transparent way. The platform makes it possible to get the maximum value out of data and create the foundation for a data-driven organization. twoday recommends a data platform, which is built on a cloud-based data architecture, which ensures a flexible and scalable solution, which is robust against the needs of the future.

This is how a data platform creates value

A data platform is absolutely essential for companies that have the ambition to utilize the value of data optimally. This is because the data platform supports the companies' processing of data from start to finish, so that a standardized and uniform way of processing and presenting data to the end users is achieved.

In addition, it embraces a secure way of managing user rights and access to data, so that one can only access the data that is relevant to one's needs and role in the company. The data is thus maintained from a central point, so that it is avoided that it is processed in several different places in the company - in different ways.

The data platform covers the entire value chain for data, which includes the functional support of the process from the collection of data, the use of structured as well as unstructured data, processing and analysis of data, as well as the display of data to end users. The term data platform is therefore often used as a general term for a number of components with different purposes and functions, which can be combined depending on technical and business needs.

Broadly speaking, a data platform supports the following business processes:

Data collection

Components to collect and obtain data for the platform.

Data storage

Components to store and archive data.

Data processing

Components to process, transform and enrich data.

Data access

Components for displaying and making data available.

Components of a data platform

As previously described, the data platform is the basic foundation, which embraces a wide range of components, each of which addresses a specific need. The components of a data platform together create a number of synergistic effects, which maximize the business value of the data.

The architecture and the components used in a modern scalable data platform are far from set in stone, but depend on several different factors. Here is an overview of some of the most important factors:

Types of data sources and formats
Data volumes
The number of end users and their role and needs
Requirements for reporting and access to data

There are a number of components, which to a large extent form the backbone of a modern data platform. They all aim to reduce operational complexity, ensure high scalability and flexibility while ensuring a cost-effective platform. The core components are basically activated:

Data Warehouse
Data integration, archiving and processing
Business Intelligence and data visualization
AI and Big Data

Why is a data platform a good idea?

The IT and data architecture of earlier times is often challenged by a fragmented data landscape, where data is placed in different systems and "data silos". At the same time, the amount of data increases, technical bottlenecks arise, performance falls, new tools and user needs appear and the importance of, and the need for, data for business decisions increases.

A data platform plays a key part in an organization, as it provides a central data foundation that is both flexible and scalable. At the same time, it provides the opportunity to use the best analysis tools across the various user groups.

The advantage of a flexible data platform is the ability to painlessly connect new data sources over time, use new data types or use new components from the platform's ecosystem - without having to start over. It gives an architectural freedom, which is the alpha and omega in relation to not being "locked in" as an organization.

With regard to scalability, the advantages of a modern data platform include the ability to turn resources both up and down as needed. Conversely, it can also be scaled down, when the resources are not used, or when the need for a resource decreases - in order to save operating costs. The advantage of scaling thus goes both ways.

All in all, this means that a data platform gives companies a foundation built on functionality and flexibility. In this way, a modern data platform becomes the cornerstone for the data-driven agenda.

The business benefits of the data platform

There are many business benefits to implementing a data platform, as it ensures a structured and transparent way to use and create value from data. Below are some of the most important value creators for the business:

Cost-effectiveness

When you invest in a cloud data platform, you avoid the high capital costs associated with purchasing and maintaining software and hardware. When you move your data platform to the cloud, companies only pay for the services they use, which is often a much more cost-effective way to operate your IT and data infrastructure.

Self-service

The concept includes the possibility for end users, without technical expertise, to access data and create their own analyses. The platform provides a structured and secure management of self-service in the organization, where end users can access and analyze data in a fast and efficient way - to support better business decisions. It is implemented so that users achieve the desired flexibility, while IT has ownership of the process, thus ensuring a high level of data governance in relation to user rights and access to data.

Flexibility

It is also easy to add new data sources and components, which makes the platform extremely flexible. This is an essential feature, as the development of working with data is in constant motion, influenced by the increasing amounts of data, different data types, new systems and technologies. Thus, the data platform ensures that the company is able to meet the constant needs of end users in terms of obtaining new analyses and insights based on new data bases.

Make better business decisions

When companies have control over the entire data journey from start to finish, it will give end users access to deep insights into data, which will create an optimal foundation from which to make important business decisions. The data platform will enable end users to perform in-depth analyses and make fast, fact-based decisions. It will create a data-driven culture where data is an integral part of the workflow, which will motivate users to trust data over their gut feeling.

Collaboration

A modern platform enables more effective collaboration across the organization by providing common tools where different roles in a data project can work together.

Technical advantages of the data platform

The technical benefits largely overlap with the business benefits. Among other things, in relation to scalability and flexibility of the platform. Below are some of the most important benefits of implementing a cloud-based data platform:

IaaS, PaaS, SaaS

These are terms that you might as well get used to. Overall, the abbreviations for the terms cover: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS). The effects of using services under one of these three types are savings in time, cost and effort from both the business and the technical resources. Services under the three types contain a greater degree of built-in components and functions, which helps to free up time for analysts, data scientists and data engineers, who can then go in search of more value-creating data projects in the organization.

Security and uptime

These are some of the keywords in a modern data platform. A cloud-based solution ensures high uptime and secure access to data using functionalities such as Geo-replication of data, Point-in-time recovery in connection with data restoration – and much more. At the same time, a modern cloud-based data platform provides much better opportunities for monitoring resources through advanced services for monitoring events and consumption on individual services, which can contribute to better resource planning and automated scaling, among other things.

Scaling and flexibility

One of the most significant benefits of a cloud-based data platform is the ability to easily and efficiently scale up and down and introduce new services based on business requirements. New services can be easily and quickly added as needed (on-demand self-service) and old services can be removed if they are no longer needed. This means that the organization needs to spend far fewer resources and less time operating the technical platform.

Automation

A cloud-based platform allows for much greater automation of development and maintenance tasks through the use of APIs and integration points. This allows for, for example, automating the addition of new data sources, managing and scheduling job runs, scaling resources, general automation of development code, handling security and much more. Automating processes can also contribute to better governance around data and assist in the creation of valid master data – including contributing to securing the “golden record”.

Get started with a data platform

No two companies are the same – and therefore no two solutions are the same.

Companies’ need to be able to make decisions based on data at lightning speed is crucial to their competitiveness. And it will be even more so in the future.

This calls for a modern data platform that can deliver insights and answer business-critical questions immediately.

At twoday, we have prepared a guide that shows you the way to a modern data platform. Easy and clear. But what does the path to a modern data platform actually look like? You will get a step-by-step roadmap in the guide below.

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