Technology for data analytics
The technology that empowers data analytics in a company does not look like a monolithic body. In fact, there are several hardware and software systems involved. For simplicity, you can think of them as being organized into three layers: these are piled upon each other and form the so-called Technology Stack. Every layer relies on the one below to function properly. Let's take a bottom-up "helicopter" view of the fundamental features that you need to know about for each layer of the stack:
- The underlying layer is the Physical Infrastructure. This is stuff you can touch. It is made up of servers or mainframe computers that store and process data. Companies can decide to either build and maintain a physical infrastructure of their own (normally kept in corporate data centers) or rely on cloud providers from whom they rent only the required resources.
- The middle layer is the Data Platform. The technology at this level implements...
