What is a data platform?

These days, data is everything. 

From determining accurate probability to creating valuable customer profiles, data is pivotal in providing businesses with the insights and analytics they need to make important decisions. And at the start of these decisions is a data platform

Data platforms, specifically the cloud data platform, are tasked with storing and managing large amounts of data from various sources stored in the Cloud. Through cloud data platforms, businesses can pull actionable insights and create meaningful, data driven decisions.

Cloud data platforms offer the reliability of a modern data platform without the use of a physical data warehouse, which (depending on your individual business needs) can be beneficial. Credited with all things from automating many tedious data tasks, scaling storage immensely, and significantly reducing costs, cloud data platforms are the go-to option for many looking to manage their huge amounts of data.

AWS Data Pipeline Tools to Service Your Data Platform

Cloud giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) seemingly has an offering for every problem presented in modern tech, with data tools being no exception. AWS has managed to create competent data platform integrations from things like visualization and data discovery, to streamlined data management. Here are some data pipeline tools offered by AWS:

AWS Glue

One of the data services offered by the cloud giant, AWS Glue is a serverless data integration tool that makes it possible for users to discover, maintain, and integrate data from various sources. Tapping into more than 70 data sources, Glue allows users to run their usual data processes, consolidating data and data servicing into one service that’s able to integrate with other AWS services. Glue also offers the Glue Data Catalog, or the central data repository warehouse.

As described by AWS, Glue’s core competencies revolve around data discovery and organization, data transformation and preparation, and pipeline building and monitoring. Standout features of the service include:

• Automatic data discovery via AWS Glue crawlers
• Drag-n-drop data transformation interface
• Machine learning capabilities for data cleansing
• Auto scaling based on workload
• Workflow definition for ETL and integrations

AWS Glue makes it easy for users of any discipline to get started, offering AWS Glue Studio on top as a graphical interface to make running Glue jobs easier. Priding themselves on their ability to automatically discover data and to competently handle and transform it, Glue is a great option for users already in the AWS space. 

When it comes to pricing, AWS Glue charges users on an hourly basis, billing by the second. In particular, Glue charges roughly $0.44 per DPU (data processing unit) per hour, with the exception of Apache Spark jobs with flexible execution ($0.29 / DPU / hour). This price rate extends to crawlers and ETL jobs , as well as to Glue’s default allocation of 10 DPUs to each Spark job and 2 DPUs to each Spark Streaming job. Depending on your usage, Glue might be the perfect solution, or something driving up your IT expenses exponentially every month.

AWS Redshift

Redshift is AWS’ data warehousing option, capable of processing large amounts of data and executing data migrations flawlessly. Users depend on Redshift for its ability to aggregate queries easily and data processing, making BI and general data analytics easy. In addition, Redshift is able to keep high volumes of structured and semi-structured data in its dedicated cloud data warehouse while storing extra structured and unstructured data in Amazon S3.For many, Redshift is the go-to option because of its PostgreSQL foundations, unparalleled processing speeds, and automation of tasks that would often irk a developer.

Redshift provides a quick, familiar data warehousing option, giving users of any experience the power to create informed decisions based on accurately processed data. 

With regards to pricing, Redshift and Redshift services abide by a pay as you go model, with your individual needs and actual usage of nodes dictating the price. Pricing starts at $0.25/her per terabyte of data- scaling up or down based on user needs. Provisioned capacity in Redshift is charged by the hour with no upfront costs for certain tools, with partial hours being charged by the second. As always, users have the option to pause and resume Redshift. For the Redshift managed storage option, users are charged a fixed GB rate for the month.

AWS Quicksight 

AWS Quicksight is a visualization platform geared around optimizing business intelligence (BI) within organizations, providing various analytic services for users. The data visualization platform makes BI, something that can be difficult for companies to generate, easily accessible for authorized users, incorporating features like automatic data visualization, interactive dashboards and paginated reports, and analytics embedding from sources like AWS Redshift.

Quicksight prides itself on its ability to scale drastically and quickly based on the amount of users without the need of configuring individual servers. In addition to integrating data to its many visualization sources, Quicksight also offers the machine learning capabilities (Q, as AWS puts it) to push for more relevant visualizations, letting users simply input questions about their data and get intuitive graphics.

Unlike the aforementioned AWS data tools, Quicksight’s pricing depends on the number of users and the roles they’re assigned within the service. The roles and prices are as follows:

• Authors: Authors have the ability to create and share dashboards with other users, base price of $24/ month, and $18/month with an annual commitment
• Readers: Readers are able to explore dashboards, download data, and receive reports, based price of $0.30/session, with up to $5 max per month

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These prices vary based on the inclusion of the Q service, which offers powerful machine learning visualization methods while increasing the monthly and annual price slightly. Readers in particular are able to be priced by capacity, with the minimum of 500 Readers costing $250 a month. Embeds, paginated reports, alerts, and Spice (data store that automatically scales) are also subject to their own unique rate pricing. 

If you are concerned about the costs of running within AWS, they offer various supporting tools such as their startup credit program, as well as a powerful AWS cost calculator to accurately simulate your cost per usage! 

In terms of security, AWS data services are among one of the most secure in the industry, with the tech giant providing industry-grade security, policy compliance across the board, and customer control and transparency. You can read more about AWS’ commitment to security here. 

When it comes to AWS data pipeline tools, you’ll be receiving some of the best tools on the market, but at the cost of AWS pricing. While these tools work well independently, supercharging your data management and data engineering would call for the usage of all three tools connected- though this sentiment depends heavily on your own business needs and aspirations for data.

Google Cloud Data Platform Tools

Google Cloud data tools are known for their backing by the tech giant and commitment to security, with core competencies including data warehouse and data lake options, powerful visualization capabilities, and insightful BI drivers. Here are some of the data options offered by Google Cloud:

BigQuery

BigQuery is Google’s serverless managed data warehousing option, incorporating AI/ML features to optimize visualization and insight efforts. For anyone in the Google ecosystem, BigQuery is a must because it offers migration, visualization, and analysis capabilities. Through its usage of SQL queries and the separation of compute and storage engines, Big Query is able to maximize flexibility and encourages independent scale from companies - something that data warehouses often struggle with. 

BigQuery is packed full of features to enhance your data and BI experience, with a few of the standard features and extra tools being:

• BigQuery Studio: a single interface for all users of various experience to prepare, manage, and visualize data
• Duet AI: An AI integration that aids in SQL and Python coding
• BigQuery Omni: Managed multi cloud analytics that provide data analysis within a single interface
• BigLake: Google’s data lakehouse option, offers data unification and centralization, making data easier to manage, monitor, and discover

In terms of pricing, basic BigQuery consists of two components:

• Compute Pricing: the cost of query processing - charged by the hour and based on your individual package
• Storage Pricing: the cost of storing data in BigQuery - charged on usage and amount of data stored

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However, expect to pay more for their other unique solutions, as well as with regards to services such as data ingestion, extraction, and replication. The good thing about BigQuery is that they do offer a free tier, giving customers 10GB of storage for free and up to 1 TB of queries free per month. 

To learn more about BigQuery pricing, visit https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/pricing 

Looker

Looker is a BI platform offered by Google that hosts different capabilities such as advanced BI, analytics and application embedding, and data modeling and visualization. Looker gives its users a unique insight into the data they have pulled, allowing for better decision making and stronger big data processing. 

With regards to pricing, Looker charges based on two separate entities:

• Platform: Looker instances, platform administration, integrations, and modeling
• User: Individual licenses

The standard option for platform pricing is pay as you go, with $5,000/month being the most common option, though discounted annual commitments and authorizations with more permissions are offered at a higher price.

Like the platform options, Looker user pricing varies based on permissions:

• Viewer - basic viewing package: $30 a month per user
• Standard - basic + core Looker competencies: $60 a month per user
• Developer - Full access to Looker: $125 a month per user

Depending on your team size and needs, Looker could be the perfect platform for your company. However, the price of Looker can skyrocket once your team expands.

Google Cloud offers state-of-the-art security, creating secure permissions and content access, being compliant with all industry standards, and working tirelessly to protect any data pipelines created.

Independent Cloud Data Platform Options

The modern cloud data platform comes in many shapes and sizes, with many data options providing features that rival those offered by aforementioned options. Here are some of the cloud data platform options defining the market:

Datazip

Datazip is a no-code data all-in-one data platform that enables users to supercharge every step within the data process. From pulling data and storing, to data transformation and visualization, Datazip pushes teams to make fast, data-driven decisions without having to expand their data team headcount. This fully managed platform hosts a variety of features that users of any development experience can enjoy, including:

• Data workflow automation
• Code-free visualization builder
• Access to data centralization integrators from over 150 sources
• Fully cloud native and scalable managed infrastructure for hassle free development
• Instant data insights

Datazip is able to store and process huge amounts of data without the creation of a data lake, with the platform being able to service anything from simple data tasks to something as intimidating as enterprise data.

Datazip offers a 30 day free trial with no credit card commitment or setups fees- a step ahead of many similar services. Datazip charges based on credits, with 1 credit (as defined on their pricing website) being 8GB RAM, 2 CPU per hour. $0.20 per credit with Datazip would equate to $576/month, based on the minimum specs required to run within the platform.

Snowflake

Snowflake is a cloud data platform tasked with eliminating data silos through automation so businesses can further use their data. Like many data options provided, Snowflake is known for its advanced features, including data storage, managed automations, and data governance controls. Particularly, Snowflake is known for these four competencies: 

• Optimized Storage: Storing unstructured, semi-structured, and structured data in one place for easy access, with managed data options
• Elastic, Multi Cluster Compute: Clusters that scale up and down based on usage
• Cloud Services: Managed automations that reduce investment spent on excessive resource consumption
• Snowgrid: Single, connected global data experience, connects third party data to power up business insights

Outside of this, Snowflake offers different workload servicing in areas such as AI/ML, cybersecurity, data engineering, and data warehousing and data lake creation.

In terms of pricing, Snowflake offers a 30 day trial with $400 worth of free usage. Outside of the free trial, Snowflake’s pricing involves the pay-as-you-go model for their compute and storage options:

• Storage: monthly fee calculated by the average amount of post-compression storage used per month - $23 per TB 
• Compute: Virtual warehousing, customers pay for virtual warehouse using Snowflake credits, with these credits depending on the warehouse size chosen - $2 per credit

Snowflake prides themselves on being HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, and FedRAMP Authorized, with their security data being consolidated in a single place.

Tableau

Tableau is a powerful no-code visualization platform aimed at simplifying data management and analysis with easy-to-use tools. Supercharging BI processes, Tableau is a crucial part of data pipelines and post-visualization analysis because of how accessible it is. Tableau is hailed as one of the best analytics tools because of its ease-of-use; designed to be user first, Tableau offers features and benefits such as:

• Drag and drop visualization
• Access to a supportive Salesforce community
• AI statistics modeling
• Expert engineering and guidance teams
• Uncapped data exploration for everyone, regardless of experience

Offering different solutions that connect to the core Tableau platform such as Tableau Cloud, Desktop, and Prep Builder, Tableau is trusted by many to best service their data needs. And this trust extends towards the company’s security and data commitment. Tableau is compliant with all industry certifications and offers a unique internal user identity service to manage accounts securely. In addition, Tableau uses SLL and TLS to encrypt transmissions and safeguard your network.

With regards to pricing, Tableau offers an unrestricted free trial for 14 days. After that trial, Tableau charges accounts based on the user count, which accounts as follows:

• Viewer (access existing dashboards): $15 a month per user
• Explorer (edit existing dashboards): $42 a month per user
• Creator (uncapped access): $75 a month per user

Disregarding teaching courses, your IT spend can be driven up by Tableau depending on your user count and specific user access accounts. However, Tableau can be the best option to service your accounts based on your specific business requirements, it’s wholly individualized.

Fivetran

Fivetran is a data movement platform that stores data, consolidates, and syncs it - connecting to over 300 data connectors. Tackling at all the pesky boundaries posed by the ELT (extract, transform, load) process with automation, Fivetran relies on various features and capabilities to streamline their five core tenants: data movement, transformations, security, governance, and platform and extensibility. Some of those competencies include:

• Automated user provisioning
• Workflow automation
• Automated schema management and replication
• Data model quickstarts
• Automated delete captures for analysis on data that doesn’t exist

And so on. 

Businesses utilize Fivetran to reduce time and resource consumption, especially when it comes to a hungry process such as data integration and moving. Automations let data engineers focus on their actual data rather than upholding internal infrastructure, all without requiring code from users.

In terms of security, Fivetran has their CCPA, GDPR, HIPAA, ISO, PCI, SOC2 certifications, and offers role-based access, column blocking, and deployment and connection safeguarding.

With regards to pricing, Fivetran offers a free plan, offerings features such as:

• Unlimited users
• Usage up to 500,000 monthly active rows (MAR) for free
• No credit card requirement
• Standard tier features
• Access to Fivetran’s support

If you are looking for a more feature-robust version of the data platform, Fivetran offers their Starter, Standard, and Enterprise plans, with business critical and private deployment options being offered exclusively through their sales team. 

Fivetran uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model, basing their pricing on your MAR, with the MAR amount ranging between 2-18% of your actual total rows. They also offer a cost calculator. 

Like the aforementioned options, whether you utilize Fivetran or not depends on your individual business needs and the amount of data that comes in.

Getting the Best of Cloud Data Platforms with Lyrid and Datazip

Data professionals have always had a hard task ahead of them. From learning how to stream data to fine tuning data extraction, these professionals are in charge of a business’ lifeline: the data that informs decision makers to make important choices. With cloud data platforms and data tools, data experts no longer need to scramble to best service their incoming data.

We’re working with one of the aforementioned companies above, Datazip, to bring you a cost-effective infrastructure and data package. The Datazip platform with Lyrid technology and physical machinery offered through Lyrid’s data center ecosystem, all for once competitive price. This package brings you all of the best that both Lyrid and Datazip have to offer (excluding egress) and delivers on the performance and reliability promised by both companies, the cost savings proven by both companies, and the data security and industry regulation that both companies abide by.

Specifically, the Lyrid and Datazip partnership delivers on a couple of things:

• End-to-end Data Solution: A complete tech stack is provided for an end-to-end data solution and cloud management infrastructure, removing the need for multiple vendors
• Cost-Effectiveness: Our bundles offer unparalleled savings because of Datazip’s API change management, free of charge new connectors, and Lyrid’s existing relations with data centers that offer further savings
• No/Low Code Platform: Lyrid and Datazip both believe in a low/no-code philosophy, translating directly to their products. Users of any development experience are able to leverage the best of both platforms without any major skill-based barriers
• Advanced Integrations: Bundle is able to sync with 150+ data sources and other tech companies depending on their stack, allowing for peak flexibility and versatility

And more!

To learn more about what Lyrid and Datazip can offer you, book a meeting with our team!