WinterCorp
Cloud Data Warehousing at Enterprise Scale

Data warehousing in the cloud has taken off like a rocket ship over the past couple of years as companies invest more in analytics. But now that users are implementing in the cloud at enterprise scale, many are running into large unexpected costs and performance or stability problems. Popular cloud data warehouse engines don’t always scale well – and the wrong choice can cost customers millions – even tens of millions of dollars per year. Some cloud data warehouse migrations balloon in cost or schedule and then get abandoned when the target data warehouse engine isn’t well suited to the business requirement. Often these failed projects would have succeeded with the right cloud data warehouse engine or with a different database design. Sometimes it is not database size, but a combination of factors – such as database complexity, workload mix and online user population -- that proves to be too much for a particular data warehouse engine.

Nobody understands this better than WinterCorp—an independent consulting firm specializing in the architecture and engineering of the modern analytic data ecosystem at scale. WinterCorp works primarily with the modern data warehouse and the data lake: cloud, hybrid and on-premise. “We help customers develop a sustainable cloud or hybrid data warehouse platform and architecture that can grow with their business, while managing the challenges of scale and complexity” says Richard Winter, Founder and CEO of WinterCorp.

WinterCorp provides companies with the right business solution by helping them select a data warehouse platform that fits their needs and directions and then enabling the customer to develop a strategic data warehouse design that delivers performance, scalability, availability, and cost-efficiency. The company anticipates the implementation challenges on behalf of customers, understands their requirements through engineering analysis, and tests the data warehouse platform to deliver practical solutions.WinterCorp advises customers on the latest cloud data warehouse solutions on the market – knowing the limitations and strengths of the platforms – and recommends the one that will best suit the goals, workloads and interests of the particular customer. “We have our own cloud data warehouse lab where we perform an on-going series of experiments on the popular platforms. We have unique test data and insights that are often surprising to even the most experienced data warehouse professionals,” says Winter.

Our customers save millions of dollars per year when we help them choose a scalable data warehouse platform that’s well-suited to their needs

WinterCorp follows its proven, systematic approach to deliver business-focused results to customers and define the complex data warehouse technical requirements needed to drive the selection process and, if necessary, a testing process The company starts with customers’ business interests, goals, and vision around what they wish to accomplish with a data warehouse over a strategic timeframe. Winter explains that customers often don’t realize that requirements just ahead – such as analyzing complex data collected from cameras, sensors, IoT, social media – requires a data warehouse engine or design that delivers exceptional performance. The company develops a clear picture of what the data warehouse must deliver based on customer requirements including data, its volume content, macro data structure, the workload, the workload structure, service-level objectives, and user population. The technical requirements form the basis for soliciting and analyzing vendor proposals to evaluate the cost of the likely solution. If indicated, WinterCorp designs and tests the data warehouse platform to validate the cost and performance of the solution for the specific requirement. “Our customers save millions of dollars per year when we help them choose a scalable data warehouse platform that’s well-suited to their needs,” remarks Winter.

WinterCorp is enabling customers to solve issues pertaining to all the data of interest to the enterprise, extending beyond the scope of a data warehouse to include the data aggregated in data lakes and other repositories. WinterCorp continues to advance its methods and invest in its labs to obtain more test results that can help guide customers while developing testing techniques and methods for solving problems quickly. Additionally, the company is working with a partner to introduce cost modeling to help customers model the cost of running their workload on the cloud or on-premises data warehouse or compare the costs of both. WinterCorp intends to add a component of formal modeling to help customers make some decisions with less testing.