The Cloud Data Brief
The Freshest Stats on Data's Migration to the Cloud
The Economist’s Intelligence Unit recently found the majority of business leaders believe data is “vital” to their organization’s profitability. So it comes as no surprise that most businesses today strive to capture and analyze data.
But how is this happening? A wide array of technologies and deployment types are available. From warehouses and Hadoop tools, to cloud, on-premise, and hybrid deployments, the landscape is diverse and quickly evolving. The Cloud Data Brief explores how thousands of companies are storing and analyzing their data, and reveals the latest trends in the move to the cloud.
Get the Cloud Data Brief for an exclusive look—and the freshest stats—on where data is headed in 2016, and stay tuned for the next update.
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Cloud Data Is Trending
Over the past 15 months, organizations in our sample increased connections to cloud-deployed data sources by 28%. In January 2015, data source connections were split 55-45 cloud to on-premise deployment. By the end of 2015, that split had shifted to 70-30.
The Data Landscape Is Diverse
When excluding file-based sources like Excel and web applications like Salesforce and Google Analytics, there are 32 distinct types of databases and Hadoop products used by customers in our data set. Two-thirds of these data source types are more frequently deployed in the cloud than on-premise.
Cloud-Native Grows, But Hybrid Still Dominates
Connections to cloud-native data sources like Amazon Redshift and Google BigQuery are gaining market share. At the beginning of 2014, they represented just 12% of all connections in our sample. By the first quarter of 2016, they had grown to 28%. But hybrid data sources—those that can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud—remain the most common type of connection. Since 2014, hybrid sources have never dropped below 60% of all connections.
More Findings from the Report
Data is expanding beyond the database
Including file-based sources and web applications, there are over 40 types of data sources represented in Tableau Cloud. And that number is constantly growing. To capitalize on the wide variety of products available today, businesses are building workflows that focus on flexibility and choice above all else.
Data gravity is shifting to the cloud
70% of the data sources used by Tableau Cloud customers are now deployed in the cloud. And usage trends suggest the focus on cloud will continue to grow. Organizations using data for analysis are quickly moving to integrate cloud services into their analytics workflows to ensure they benefit from the shift in data gravity.
Hybrid data sources are business-critical
We may be headed towards cloud, but hybrid data sources remain the most practical solution for many businesses, especially those transitioning to the cloud. Hybrid represents over half of all connections in Tableau Cloud, signifying that the majority of organizations are distributing data across cloud and on-premise environments.Our Methodology
The Cloud Data Brief is an ongoing project aimed at quantifying the evolution of the data landscape. It explores usage patterns across more than one million anonymous data source connections published to Tableau Cloud by over 4,000 customers. Analyzing these connections offers a glimpse into how and where businesses are capturing and storing their data today.
The data set in this report is drawn from a cloud-hosted tool, and the usage patterns may represent a bias towards cloud overall. That said, Tableau Cloud customers span nearly every industry and vary from small businesses to enterprises. Our analysis includes them all, and we believe it serves as an accurate indicator of broad trends in the market.
We invite you to get the report for a deeper look at the findings.
Dig into the Data
Read the Cloud Data Brief for more in-depth analysis of today’s data landscape, and stay tuned for the next update including cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.