Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Each organization must determine what responsibilities are best suited to
their own enterprise data warehouse team. The team should provide a focal
point for channeling communication, fostering cooperation, and helping to
ensure that each data warehouse project is successful. However it is organized,
the team must be responsive, and avoid becoming a bottleneck.
Funding the Enterprise DW Team
Logically, it makes sense to gain economies of scale for technology and people,
but who will pay for this? The budget for a centralized team may seem
expensive at first, but remember that you are already paying for this as part of
each and every project and existing standalone data warehouse. This seems to
be more when you add it all together, rather than have these costs embedded
in many different places.
Additional time is required for coordination and communication, but a cost
savings is realized by having skilled resources available so that each project
does not have to start from scratch (data architecture, selecting the technology,
etc.). You can also avoid costs by preventing projects from making choices that
will not work. Having a centralized data warehouse function will not prevent
all mistakes, but it can certainly help each project avoid the most common
errors and get things done sooner.
The real challenge is to determine a fair way to allocate the cost of these
central data warehouse resources across all the different groups. A variety of
funding models are used to pay for an enterprise data warehouse team. The first
thing to understand is how other enterprise services are funded. If all database
administration resources are centralized today, are the services charged back
by hours worked or by size of the database? It can be straightforward to follow
an existing pattern. The enterprise DW team costs can be shared across all of
the groups who are using (directly or indirectly) the data warehouse. These
costs can be allocated by the number of users, the size of their data, the number
of queries that are run, or sometimes even by the size of the rest of their budget.
Another approach for funding the enterprise DW team is to charge for
services. Chargeback, or consulting, rates must be determined, typically based
upon the cost for an individual or perhaps as a blended cost of all of the team
members. The biggest risk with this approach is that use of these internal
consultants is often viewed as optional. These resources are either avoided
(due to the high internal chargeback associated with such highly skilled and
experienced employees) or their services are used only if the team is in big
trouble. Either way, the organization still incurs the cost of individual project
teams forging their own path.
Another common alternative is to automatically allocate the cost of the
enterprise DW team across all projects or groups who are involved in data
warehousing. This can be based upon the number of members on a project
