Understanding your data could save you significant costs. According to Tech Jury, Netflix has saved over $1 billion by using their data to retain customers. If you are looking to make savings, drive growth and make data-driven decisions, you may want to outsource a data engineering partner to help you achieve your data goals. In this article, we will explore things you need to consider when looking for a data engineering partner.

Track record of successful data projects

One of the first things you should consider when looking to work with a data engineering partner for whatever service, whether that’s data warehousing, data management or data migration is the experience. Ensure that the data engineering provider has completed successful projects with the service you require. If you are in conversation, you can ask about successful projects, however, you may initially want to scope out the website and look into whether they have client success stories or client testimonials, this should give you a good indicator of whether a company will be a good fit for you.

Explore our client success stories

Relevant data engineering skills

The data industry is booming, however, there is a considerable skills gap as highlighted by Towards Data Science, which means it can be difficult to recruit for positions in data engineering. Outsourcing is the best alternative to this issue. If you are looking to outsource a data engineering provider, you need to ensure that they have the right skills to deliver your service. Do they have data engineers that have certifications in leading technologies? Do they have experienced data engineers on their team that are experts in their field? Additionally, you may also want to find out if they have expertise and skills working on projects with other businesses like yours, whether that’s by industry or the type of data you are dealing with.

A data engineering services provider with highly skilled people will be able to prove that they can successfully complete your project.

Expertise in data technologies

Firstly, you will need to consider which technologies you want to employ for your project. A good data technology partner will help you explore your options, whether that’s in line with your expertise in-house or if you require recommendations. Using the right technologies is key for your data, especially in the long term as it can impact the ease of use, maintenance costs and much more.

At Ardent, we are happy to make recommendations of the most suitable technologies for each project and client. Where one technology may be great for a client, another may fall short. As our engineers have used a wide variety of technologies to deliver our services, we are in the position to help you make your decisions.

Keeping your data secure

Keeping your data secure has never been so important, with cyberattacks increasing consistently on a year-on-year base. According to Forbes, in 2021 there was an increase of 15.1% in cyberattacks compared to 2020. When choosing a company to deliver your data services you need to ensure that they have robust data security practices in place to make sure that your data is safe.

At Ardent, we are an ISO 27001 certified company, which gives our clients peace of mind that we follow industry best practices to ensure their data is safe. Also, our data engineers work with world-class technologies that make data security a priority.

Effective communication throughout the project

Whether it’s short or long-term, effective communication is key for the project to be a success. Find out how the data engineering communicated by looking at channels of communication, the regularity of communication and updates and how they take on board feedback. This will ensure that you have a smooth communication process during the project, and you will be able to work together to meet the end goals.

At Ardent, we have a structured project delivery process, with regular updates provided to our clients and set, clear channels of communication.

Ardent, your data engineering partner

We have worked with a wide variety of clients across the world from a range of industries to help them achieve their data goals. We have the experience, the skills, the technologies, effective communication with robust data security to fulfil your data needs. If you are looking to work with a credible, reliable data engineering partner with a proven track record of success, get in touch to find out how we can help.

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What is Power BI

Data is being produced at exponential rates every day. Businesses now more than ever rely on that data therefore; they need to be able to make sense of the data to make well-informed business decisions. Power BI is a data visualisation tool that enables businesses to understand, analyse and report on data. It has become of the leading business reporting tools in a short span of time to rival some of the biggest data reporting technologies such as Tableau. According to Slintel, Power BI has a market share of 12.86% compared to Tableau’s market share of 15.77%, taking into consideration the much shorter time it has been around, we can expect the technology to dominate the market in the near future.

Our engineers have worked on a number of data engineering projects leveraging the Power Platform technologies to deliver powerful data reporting and analysis platforms.

Benefits of the new Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is continuously evolving and as it stands today the software is much more powerful and robust and offers granular level customisation. It offers a number of unmatched benefits which is why it has gone from strength to strength in the market and include.

• Easy to use – It is considered easy to use as compared to its counterparts. It is suitable for a variety of users and does not require advanced data analysis or technical skills.
• Cost-effective – Offers a free version for personal use. Additionally, it’s a lot more cost-effective than Tableau in terms of pricing.
• Data source integration – You can access data from multiple data sources including Excel, SV, PDF, JSON, XML, databases, apps and more.
• Real-time analytics – Enables you to connect with data sources such as social media to get real-time analytics.
• Visual capabilities – One of the key selling points of any data reporting and visualisation tool is the stunning visual capabilities and Power BI does not disappoint. With easy to digest and visually impressive capabilities, it presents data so it can be understood through graphs, charts and more.
• Machine learning – Built-in machine learning features can help users spot trends and make educated, informed predictions.
• Large volumes of data – It is a powerful software tool that can handle huge volumes of business data.
• Highly customisable – Users can customise their dashboards, interfaces, reports to access reports they need quickly and easily, saving time and increasing productivity.
• Microsoft backing – It’s a relatively new technology, however, it has already secured a good portion of the business intelligence market share. With a powerful brand backing the technology, we can predict it will continuously evolve and improve with investment

Limitations of the new Power BI

There are some limitations you need to consider if you are looking at Power BI and they include:

• Messy UI (user interface) – Some consider the user interface crowded and messy rather than a clean look with fewer icons.
• Dealing with large volumes of data – You will be required to take out the premium package if you are dealing with large volumes of data.
• Slow data processing – Some have found that processing large volumes of data is slower than usual.
• Table relationships – It can fully understand simplistic relationships between tables, however, anything complex will require the creation of unique fields to avoid confusion.

Industry experts and what they think

Microsoft Power BI has been regarded highly by the likes of Gartner and Forrester. Gartner has recognised Microsoft as a leader in Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms for fourteen consecutive years. Forrester has also recognised Microsoft as a leader for Augmented BI Platforms for Q3 of 2021.

“It is hard not to consider Power BI as your top choice for an enterprise BI platform.” – Forrester Q3, 2021 Report

Laxman Amrale, Data Engineering Expert at Ardent commented: “Microsoft first introduced the technology in 2014 and released the tool to the general public in 2015. Initially, it didn’t provide all of the capabilities for customised solutions and lacked the ability to peel away different layers. For example, you couldn’t leverage the data ingest portions of Power BI with custom visualisations, forcing exclusively the use of Power BI’s visualisation technology with no ability to customise it to client needs.

Now Power BI can be leveraged for all data ingest and can create custom data visualisations to render the information. We have complete control of the user experience with Power BI handling all of the data intakes. Charts can be directly taken from Power BI and integrated into our custom solutions.

With Power BI, clients do not require developers to add charts for them, they can use the tools to create the charts independently. Over time, Power BI data visualization has become much more powerful, robust, and customizable to specific needs.”

Explore our data engineering services.

Recent updates to Power BI

There have been some stand out updates that have evolved and improved the platform significantly and they include:

• Performance improvements to backup and restore operations for datasets in Power BI. Benchmark tests with 1GB, 5GB, and 10GB datasets show backups can now be completed up to 22 times faster than before, and the time required for restore operations can also be reduced by more than 30%.
• Public preview of new mobile formatting options. Now you can choose to have two separate designs for the same visual, one for each layout.
• General availability of Export Power BI report to file API. This API allows you to export Power BI reports to the following file formats: PDF, PowerPoint and PNG, by using a REST call.
• New admin APIs to retrieve email subscriptions and widely shared reports.
• Asynchronous refresh is now available for public preview. The asynchronous refresh REST API for Power BI brings built-in features for reliability, such as auto retries and batched commits.

Ardent Power Platform services

Power BI is a technology that has continuously evolved and improved over time. With a number of benefits it offers as a rival of Tableau and other business intelligence and data reporting technologies, it stands firm in the market. Our data engineers have worked with Microsoft Power Platform tools including Power Apps and Power Automate to deliver fully integrated, automated business intelligence solutions to several clients. If you are looking to utilise these powerful tools for your next project and are looking for credible, experienced data engineering experts, then get in touch to find out how we can help.

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If your company works with big data and you are looking to outsource your data management, whether you lack the expertise and infrastructure in house, are dealing with high management costs or need around the clock support, here are the key factors you should consider when outsourcing data management.

Data management expertise

One of the key reasons organisations will look to outsource is because they do not have the resources in-house and it can be incredibly time-consuming and costly to hire a team of data engineers. When looking to outsource you need to ensure that your data management service provider has the right talent with the right skillset and expertise to effectively manage your data. At Ardent, our engineers have skills in various leading data technologies and have a proven track record of successful data projects, from moving different data sets from databases to the cloud to building robust data pipelines.

Data platform technologies

One of the greatest benefits of outsourcing data management will be the access you will have to experienced data engineers that have worked with a variety of data platform technologies. Therefore, the key consideration points should be whether the data management provider has worked with and has access to major data platform technologies such as AWS Redshift or Microsoft Azure. If you are data is stored on AWS, then you will require platform-specific skill sets. At Ardent, we use technologies best suited to the client, their business and data and ensure that our clients are not limited to just one technology.

Data Storage

Where your data is stored will impact your decision on the type of data management provider you work with. Whether your data is stored on-premise, on the cloud, in a hybrid environment, or in a multi-cloud environment, you will have to find the right type of provider with data engineers that have the experience to manage your data effectively. For example, at Ardent our data engineers have managed data on behalf of clients that is stored on various storage solutions, from hybrid private and public cloud solutions to those stored in a multi-cloud environment.

Data security

Data security is key when handling any type of data. You will need to find a data management partner that takes data security seriously. What measures do they have in place to deal with data risks? Have they invested in acquiring any data security certifications? For example, Ardent is an ISO 27001 certified company and follows industry best practices when handling data whether that is in house or client data.

Benefits of outsourcing data management

There are a great number of benefits of outsourcing data management, and they include:

• Industry knowledge – if a company has a significant amount of experience working with similar scale and types of data, they can make recommendations and provide industry knowledge to help you improve and streamline your data further.
• Cost-effective – organisations will save both time and resources in recruitment when outsourcing data management.
• Visibility and accessibility – a good data management company will ensure that the end-user has visibility and accessibility to data quickly and efficiently. For example, Ardent has worked with a client to optimise data queries with Amazon Athena on large sets of data and has reduced the search time by a considerable amount. 
• Scalability – Ensure that you work with a company that can manage your data with scalability in mind. With data continuously growing, scalability needs to be the top priority. At Ardent, we work with leading data technologies that enable scalability for our clients. 
• Organised data – The majority of data you deal with will be unstructured, making it complex and unhelpful. A good data management partner can ensure that your data is structured and organised for ease of access and to gain useful insights.

Mitigating risks of outsourcing data management 

There are some risks to take into consideration when it comes to outsourcing:

• Loss of control – this is the biggest factor to consider. Some organisations may be hesitant to give up the control they have over their data. However, the key solution to this is to find a credible, trusted and reliable partner. For example, at Ardent we pride ourselves on being the partner that clients can rely on and have trust in. This is through experience in the industry, providing client testimonials, acquiring industry accreditations and much more.
• Data security risks – There can be huge repercussions for organisations that do not do their utmost to ensure data safety. Therefore, when it comes to outsourcing your data management partner will need to have robust data security measures in place to mitigate the risks.

Ardent data management services

Ardent’s highly skilled and experienced data engineers have worked with a wide variety of clients to deliver secure, scalable and streamlined data services. We invest in our people and world-leading data technologies to deliver excellence. If you are looking to outsource your data management, then get in touch to find out how we can help.

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