nextanalytics blog

OLAP isn't going away, but it is time to stop equating the word OLAP with cubes.  OLAP means high performance, optimized for fast retrieval. There's an increasing number of alternatives to delivering OLAP.  Search for keywords such as  BI appliances, cloud hosted BI, column oriented databases, in-memory analytics.  You'll find plenty of good quality products including in our partner list.

Most of them are less complex and less expensive than cubes yet they deliver on original promise of OLAP but rarely use cube technology.  How is this possible?  Because of the evolution to low cost memory and high speed large volumes of disk space, the data processing algorithms were able to improve.

It's time to stop equating the word Cube with the word OLAP. OLAP is alive and well, but cubes are not the only way to deliver OLAP. 

nextanalytics delivers high performance, better information, and is less expensive to implement.  It's better and more flexible than cube technology.