AWS Quicksight: Overview and Benefits
Introduction
Data is the new oil of the 21st century. We literally now live in a digital world where every action we perform, is recorded in some form or the other. That google search you did for the best holiday destinations? Recorded. Commented on a friend’s photo on Facebook? Recorded. And that wonderful self-help book you ordered on Amazon? Recorded. For businesses, it makes perfect sense to utilize this data to make their services better. But the biggest question in most of the companies starting to work with their data is: How? How do you leverage all the piles of data that you have collected? That’s where Business Intelligence (BI) comes in. Business Intelligence is a set of strategies and technologies used to collect business data and turn them into useful insights. There are quite a few BI tools that can enable you to do this. Tableau, Power BI, Qlik, AWS Quicksight, etc. are some of the business intelligence tools that you can use. There are a whole lot of other tools too. This article aims to get you familiar with a less popular but powerful option, AWS Quicksight.
If you are interested in learning more about business intelligence, you can check this out.
What is AWS Quicksight?
Amazon Web Service (AWS) is not a new name in the cloud computing industry. AWS is one of the large providers for almost any cloud service you would need. But it wasn’t until 2016 that AWS released its Business Intelligence service, Quicksight. AWS Quicksight is relatively new in the business intelligence industry but is quite powerful. AWS Quicksight is worth considering due to its relatively low pricing, ease of setup, and a lot more. So without any further ado, let’s look at the benefits of using AWS Quicksight.
Top Benefits of using AWS Quicksight
1. Great Data Compatibility
AWS Quicksight has great support for different data sources. It can access data from almost any data source present on the internet and even from a CSV file (comma separated file). Moreover, Quicksight has great support for AWS data sources like S3, RDS, Aurora, Redshift, DynamoDB, Kinesis, etc.
2. High-Performance SPICE Engine
One of the great features that Quicksight provides is its slick and smooth SPICE engine. SPICE is Amazon Quicksight’s super-fast, parallel, in-memory calculation engine. SPICE was built to rapidly perform advanced calculations. With SPICE, you can fetch your data super fast and perform some highly complex and advanced calculations very fast.
3. Great Accessibility
Another great feature of AWS Quicksight is its great compatibility and access across multiple devices. Its dedicated mobile apps allow you to access the dashboards while you are on the go. Quicksight also enables you to embed the dashboard into your own applications, which proves to be quite handy, especially if your business uses a central admin panel, where you control all the business operations. Your Quicksight dashboards can quite seamlessly integrate into your own applications which enables you to access the dashboards without even signing into the AWS control panel.
4. Learning Curve
Compared to the other tools in the segment, Quicksight is quite easy to pick up due to its intuitive interface. And the fact that it works on a serverless architecture, enables you to quickly set up and start using it in literally no time, without worrying about maintaining the servers. There is also detailed documentation on how everything works so in case you get stuck, you know where to look. Its interface is quite user-friendly and makes the process of creating dashboards quite seamless.
5. Smart and Interactive Visualizations
In spite of being a relatively new player in the business intelligence market, AWS Quicksight has all the kinds of visualizations that you might need. That being said, AWS is actively working on bringing new visualizations to the platform. All the visualizations that you create using the tool are interactive. The SPICE engine also has a feature called ‘Auto Graph’ which suggests the best type of visualization by analyzing the backend datasets.
6. Data Alerts
While managing a business, tracking all your important metrics throughout the day is nearly impossible. You cannot log in to the dashboard all the time, whether it is through the web application, mobile app, or even from your own application. AWS Quicksight’s data alerts come into handy in scenarios like these. Quicksight monitors your KPI’s for you and alerts you if a particular threshold is satisfied. This is particularly useful in situations where your weekly sales drop or your number of orders for the day is comparatively low. You might want to check if there is some problem with your website in scenarios like these. Nonetheless, these data alerts can enable you to continuously monitor your business’s health.
7. Scalability
You can use AWS Quicksight in almost every business domain, ranging from e-commerce to manufacturing and everything in between. Quicksight can also be scaled to thousands of users who can all work and access all the data sources independently and simultaneously. And this real-time parallel usage of the data sources doesn’t affect the performance.
8. Low Cost
Comparing to the other business intelligence tools in the market, AWS Quicksight comes at a relatively cheaper price point. It follows the industry-first pay per session billing method where you will be charged on the number of sessions you use. So, instead of paying a fixed license fee every month, you will be paying only for what you use. You can find more details regarding AWS Quicksight pricing here.
Why Quicksight over other tools like Tableau or Power BI?
So, the ultimate question is why you would need to go with AWS Quicksight rather than other popular and much-mature business intelligence tools like Tableau or Power BI. The answer boils down to your specific need and budget. Here are a few reasons why you should consider AWS Quicksight over other tools.
- AWS Quicksight works great with other AWS products. If your organization relies mostly on AWS services, then Quicksight is something you should definitely consider as it seamlessly integrates with other AWS services and is in line with the billing too.
- If your budget is limited for business intelligence, you should consider Quicksight as an option due to its relatively affordable pricing without losing much of the capabilities.
- AWS Quicksight is comparatively very easy to set up, unlike other tools. You just signup and you are good to go. If you need something with which you can get going right away, AWS Quicksight is definitely worth considering.
Final Thoughts
AWS Quicksight is still in its initial stages and promises much better and handy features in the future. If you have a heavy footprint already in other AWS services like RDS, Kinesis, etc. you should definitely try out AWS Quicksight. Even if you don’t have other services from AWS but need an affordable but reliable business intelligence tool, Quicksight is a great option.
This post was originally published on my blog at praneethvasarla.com
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