Gratuitous Sales Pitch
I’m no fan of corporate sales pitches, but sometimes, the situation is just too compelling to ignore. Despite being in the data warehouse game since my days at Oracle back in the 1980s (yes, computers have been around that long, kids!), I’m no independent data warehouse expert. I proudly acknowledge my pay-for-play credentials, but I also firmly believe in “see for yourself” thinking. So, dear reader, let’s dive in!
Why Modernize Amazon Redshift?
Lately, we’ve been witnessing a growing interest in replacing Amazon Redshift with Yellowbrick. It’s understandable; organizations often default to AWS part of a one-stop shop for all their cloud needs, only to discover that their data warehouse choice is putting the brakes on growth. At a macro level, the recent surge in interest rates and borrowing costs has shone a spotlight on the operational expenses tied to large databases. What was once an unquestioned practice of increasing cloud spending is now under scrutiny, especially by companies dealing with cash flow challenges or those where cloud costs significantly impact their gross product margin. The feedback we’re getting from users is crystal clear: while Amazon Redshift is a decent MPP (Massively Parallel Processing) data warehouse, it becomes prohibitively expensive and a growth bottleneck when the bills start piling up.
The Yellowbrick Advantage
Yellowbrick typically comes in with 10x higher query performance, supports 3x the number of concurrent users, and runs around 15x more databases out of a single instance. On top of that, it’s got built-in support for streaming data ingest and is a Kubernetes-native database, making it a breeze to deploy in your cloud environment. All these features combine to allow you to efficiently run modern, secure, analytical-intensive workloads with predictable costs as you scale.
Price performance isn’t just a fancy term; it directly translates into business agility. For instance, consider the experience of Symphony RetailAI, an end-to-end, AI-powered solutions provider for retailers and CPGs. With Amazon Redshift, cube-build took up to a gruelling 20 hours, making it nearly impossible to enhance functionality without breaching SLAs – a situation untenable for any data analytics service provider. Besides the risk of upsetting users, this stunted Symphony RetailAI’s growth, hindering them from capitalizing on new opportunities. However, when they switched to Yellowbrick, cube-build times were 3X-5X faster, and for less cost. And as Nigel Pratt, SVP of Development, is fond of saying: “Yellowbrick has turned out to be a very fast, cost-effective, and reliable system, enabling us to provide all our customers with richer insights more quickly.” You can read all about it here.
Painless Migration
Given Amazon Redshift and Yellowbrick both have their roots in Postgres, migration is painless. And if you stay with AWS, data is stored in the same S3 storage, simplifying migration further. You can read the data sheet here. Additionally, Yellowbrick offers support for Microsoft Azure cloud opening your choice of cloud service provider. Amazon Redshift is a managed data warehousing service operating on its own dedicated infrastructure. It is not designed to be deployed or orchestrated on a Kubernetes (K8s) cluster. K8s is gaining traction as a critical trend since it offers enhanced flexibility, facilitating seamless transitions between different cloud providers and regions to optimize costs and meet compliance needs. Moreover, it opens doors to potential private cloud setups within your data centers, while ensuring a consistent approach to authentication, monitoring, cost management, and observability.
Don’t Take My Word for It!
To sum up, if you’re hitting a roadblock with Amazon Redshift performance, looking to automate deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications, and keen to avoid giving your CFO a heart attack every time the AWS bill arrives, then why not give Yellowbrick a spin? But don’t take my word for it – Talk with an Expert yourself. Your users might just thank you for it!
