How to Choose the Right Data Platform for Your Business: Warehouse, Lake, or Lakehouse?

Data is now central to how organisations operate, compete, and grow. But before you can turn that data into insight, you need the right foundation.

For many businesses, that foundation starts with a data warehouse. Others unlock more flexibility with a data lake. And increasingly, organisations are moving to a data lakehouse, which combines the strengths of both approaches.

Understanding what each of these options does - and the outcomes they enable - will help you invest in the right platform for your organisation’s future.

Make Better Decisions Faster with a Data Warehouse

A data warehouse is built to make business data useful. It brings together information from across the organisation, cleans and structures it, and makes it available for dashboards, reporting, and analysis.

The result is a single, trusted view of your business. Decision-makers no longer waste time reconciling numbers or debating which report is correct. Instead, they get accurate answers quickly and can make confident decisions based on reliable data.

Unlock New Possibilities with a Data Lake

Traditional warehouses are excellent at producing consistent reports, but they are less suited to exploring the growing variety of modern data. That is where a data lake becomes valuable.

A data lake stores all of your data in its raw form, not just structured tables, but also clickstreams, sensor data, logs, and more. It gives your teams the flexibility to explore new questions, build predictive models, and experiment with emerging technologies without being limited by rigid schemas.

Combine Flexibility and Performance with a Data Lakehouse

As organisations matured in their use of data, many found themselves managing both a lake and a warehouse. One provides flexibility and scale. The other delivered performance and structure. But maintaining both can be complex and expensive.

A data lakehouse brings these worlds together. It allows you to store and manage all of your data in one place, raw or structured, historical or real-time, while still supporting fast, reliable queries for reporting and analytics.

The result is a unified platform that supports everything from business intelligence to advanced machine learning, reduces duplication, and lowers total cost of ownership.

How to Choose the Right Approach for Your Organisation

Each of these approaches solves a different problem, and the right choice depends on your priorities:

• If your main goal is to deliver reliable dashboards and reports, start with a data warehouse.

• If you want to store and explore large volumes of raw, varied data, invest in a data lake.

• If you want both flexibility and structure in a single platform, consider a data lakehouse.

Whichever path you choose, the key is to align your data platform with the decisions you need to make and the outcomes you want to achieve.

Let’s Map Out the Right Data Strategy for Your Business

Whether you are exploring a warehouse, a lake, or a lakehouse, the most effective solutions start with a clear understanding of your data landscape and strategic goals.

Our Data Discovery process is designed to uncover opportunities, shape a roadmap, and help you make technology choices that deliver real impact.

Let’s explore what’s possible together.