Analytics in a MultiCloud Environment

Multi-Cloud environments are a necessary solution for enterprises that want to leverage the elasticity of the public cloud, but cannot host all of their data on one platform.

Analytics becomes an issue in multi-cloud environments. The data must be analysed as a whole, yet is split between very different platforms.

So, what is the answer to the problem of analytics across multiple clouds? – Orchestration. If your organisation needs predictable and accurate insights on a daily basis, across multiple clouds – data orchestration will ensure all data is coordinated and available.

Our CEO, Zachary Zeus, and Vice President and Managing Director of Hitachi Vantara Aus/NZ Nathan McGregor discuss analytics in a multi-cloud environment and the importance of data orchestration in delivering organisational value.

Transcript

Nathan
Hello there. I’m Nathan McGregor, Vice-President and Managing Director of Hitachi Vantara here in Australia New Zealand. I’m joined today with Zach Zeus who’s the CEO of BizCubed. One of the longest standing Pentaho partners in Australia. I think you’ve been doing it for better than 10 years now. Is that right?

Zach
That’s right, yeah.

Nathan
Excellent. I really wanted to talk today around the use case of analytics within the broader environments, particularly as it relates to IT. We’ve been focusing, Hitachi Vantara, a lot around multi cloud environments. Running unstructured data sets on object storage models and block storage across multiple cloud environments. So, that’s all well and good and I understood in virtualisation in that part of the world, but what does it mean when it relates to analytics and the use of analytics once you’re in that multi cloud environment? So maybe you could give us a bit of an insight from your perspective on that front case.

Zach
Sure. I’ll maybe do that by describing a customer example that we have who’s working in that environment. We have a customer who has put a bunch of devices out into their facilities on the edge. Those devices do some edge computing and some do some reaction to the environment in real time. And the data from those devices go up into the Google Cloud platform and use Google BigQuery to do some even more advanced analytics and what I sort of describe as middle edge computing out of a cloud. And then, after that, the information is then pumped into their data warehouse in their private cloud that’s on-prem and that orchestration is all handled by the Pentaho platform that enables them to orchestrate that information going from the device all the way through to their on-prem data warehouse.

Nathan
Once it’s in an on-prem data warehouse, who inside of that business is the user of that data and the outcome they’re looking for?

Zach
Yeah, the main user in this example is the marketing team. And figuring out how they’re going to understand the behaviour of how people are moving through their environments and use that to drive additional people coming through, pricing of the environment. Things like that.

Nathan
And we definitely see a lot of that in the market around much more defined requirements from the business that rely heavily on technology. So getting that alignment between the two organizations is really critical. So sounds like that’s being successful there.

Zach
Yep.

Nathan
If the business were clear about what they were looking for though why didn’t they just go with a full cloud environment? Just go completely public?

Zach
Yeah, so the main reason is the majority of the information that they were doing analysis on was in their enterprise data warehouse which was an on-prem solution and has been for quite a long time. And so the smarts really occur out in the cloud and the edge, but the history and the… One of the things I talk about when I talk to customers is the weight of your existing. Cause it takes time to move big, big enterprise infrastructure or data warehousing or whatever out into a cloud environment and it’s still not done and we’re three years down from our initial implementation. And it may never get done because of some of the use cases and some of the costs associated with what they’re running there.

Nathan
So in that model though, to deliver that need where you’re taking advantage of public cloud but then delivering the traditional, historical, business outcomes that they need. In that scenario then it’s areal data orchestration model that the Pentaho or the Pentalytics platform is doing in that scenario, yes?

Zach
Yeah, no. It needs to be orchestrated because in order for the value to be realised, the data actually has to arrive from the edge all the way back to their on-prem solution. And if that’s not done on time, every time, the value’s not getting delivered.

Nathan
So, I’m sure there’s a lot of people in that scenario right at this moment because of the amount of data that businesses are currently generating and the fact that they want to use those in true business decisions, so how will someone know that they’ve got this kind of problem that you can help them with?

Zach 
Yeah, it’s a good question. There’s two ways of knowing and one is from the technology side. If the technology teams are having a difficult time orchestrating data between clouds. If they’re spending a lot of time trying to decide which cloud, where to put things, then we can help them orchestrate that and figure that out based on…We look at sort of the weight of information and use that to move things towards the heaviest weight and that sometimes gets overrided by strategy but usually we land it as close to the bigger weight so we’re moving less data across the wire cause that speeds up analytics and speeds up time to value. From a business side, the other way to look at it… The other way to know you have a problem is if you have an analyst or an analyst team that’s constantly pulling data from different cloud environments and joining with on-prem, that stuff that’s being done manually probably can be automated through the Pentaho tooling and platforms that we offer and some of the tools and methodologies that can really accelerate the rate at which they realise the value from these edge devices.

Nathan
Kay, great. Thanks Zach. Those are great examples in terms of how an enterprise needs to use the data across a multi cloud environment and how it can help, but how will someone know if they’re actually in that challenge that you can help them out with?

Zach
Yeah, so the…The main way to tell is if you’re on the IT side, if you’re having a difficult time delivering the business value, the business outcome, that your teams are looking for, we can probably help you orchestrate that information a little bit more efficiently. If you’re on the business side, you might have an analyst who’s pulling data from these multi-cloud environments and manually pulling that data together and if that’s the case, we can definitely help and help you accelerate the time to value.

Nathan
Great. And I’m sure there’s a lot of people listening who are very much in that situation now so look forward to you helping them out. Thanks again Zach.

Zach
Thanks Nathan.

Nathan
Cheers.

Zach
Cheers.