Why DW is necessary for a company?(Assignment 4a)

During this past week, our professor talked about Data Warehouse and Data Base. I am very interested in them because I worked for a real estate consultant company which was a new company and needed Data Base to manage information and customers’ files. After class, I found a corresponding article titled: “Do You Need a Data Warehouse Layer in your business Intelligence Architecture?”
It introduces some information about Data Warehouse and how it works. It also explains why companies need Data Base Manage System or Data Warehouse. I totally agree with it. There are many reasons for an enterprise to implement Data Warehousing, such as competitive advantage, improving business operations and regulatory compliance. We should include data warehousing along with Business Intelligence and Performance Management, both of which are built on data warehousing, since the IT enables many business-driven initiatives.
In my opinion, however, Data Warehouse project also takes a long time to finish, and it is not always successful. Data warehousing projects take time because they generally involve consolidating data from many sources to an enterprise. This consolidation involves ensuring data consistency, integrity and quality. This process means talking to various business groups across the enterprise.


Article: Do You Need a Data Warehouse Layer in your business Intelligence Architecture?
Link: http://www.datawarehouse.com/article/?articleid=5672
Author: Steven K. Ball Published September 27, 2005