Preface

This manual provides an architectural and conceptual overview of Lyftrondata, which is a self-service Data Foundation Platform for BI and Analytics. It describes how the Lyftrondata platform functions, and it lays a conceptual foundation for much of the practical information contained in other manuals. Information in this manual applies to the Lyftrondata platform running on all supported operating systems.

Introduction

The primary reason that companies implement Business Intelligence (BI) solutions is to support and improve their decision-making process. Changing world puts pressure on companies to react and make decisions faster. Time to decide is shrinking and companies find it harder to make timely decisions. Organizations need to be agile and embrace change quickly by adopting their culture, existing IT systems and reporting. New valuable, external data sources emerge frequently. Cloud usage is growing due to the utilization of SaaS platforms, putting more pressure on companies IT and operations. New technologies like analytical column databases, in-memory databases, mobile, machine learning or BigData systems, create an opportunity to speed up analysis and open new possibilities. Current data management processes utilizing ETL, require a lot of effort to change or process and are usually not suitable for an agile approach.