For modern business, there are few resources quite as valuable as data. The main problem is that data isn’t very useful if it can’t be accessed across an entire company. In the digital age, every interaction produces some kind of data, and the better that a company utilizes its data the more it can grow. The biggest problem with this is that the more that a company grows the more data it will have and the harder managing all of that data then becomes. 

This is where a lot of the challenges come from that are brought on by the digital age of modern business. Handling data is expensive and for small businesses that are putting together their first data teams, this is a lot to consider. For any small to medium-sized business that is developing its data stack, there are some options that can really help bring a high degree of functional cost-effectiveness to the table. 

One of those tools that should be non-negotiable, is dbt Cloud. This data integration tool is something that was specifically designed to help leverage the time of a small data team for success. The problem with working with data is that engineers can quickly get their hands tied up in seemingly endless projects that take a tedious amount of time and work to complete. That’s where dbt Cloud seeks to change this with tools that allow engineers and scientist to leverage their time and talent for success.

So what is dbt Cloud and why should it be an integral part of your modern data stack? Here is everything you need to know! 

dbt Cloud, Built With Teams In Mind

So what exactly is dbt Cloud? Dbt Cloud is a data build tool that at its core is a product environment tool that has been built to help leverage engineers’ time for success. This particular tool focuses on the T in ETL. ETL is one of the most effective and tried and true methods of data integration which is a huge component of the modern data stack. 

In order to take siloed data that is created in disparate sources and put it in a data warehouse, the data has to be taken through a process of integration. Data integration is unique from data aggregation in that it seeks to not only move data to one centralized location but make it actually usable across a company. When data is integrated into a warehouse, it can then become a source of truth that can spread across every department. 

Powerful Orchestration

Dbt Cloud is a product environment tool that brings software engineering best practices to the data world. It also has a high focus on efficient orchestration and is designed to help give small data teams a powerful tool that can help them leverage their time. Instead of getting caught up in tedious workflows, with dbt Cloud, data teams can experience a certain sense of freedom to use their talents wisely. 

This is the main reason that dbt Cloud has become such an important part of so many data stacks. This tool is also particularly designed to integrate with almost any modern data stack and is even open-sourced so that companies can scale accordingly. This allows companies that may need to upgrade their orchestration tool to something like Prefect or Dagster, to do so seamlessly without losing dbt Cloud entirely. With no lock-in feature associated with its orchestration tool, upgrading to scale your team is easier than it ever has been. 

Slim ‘CI’ 

One of the most powerful features that dbt Cloud boasts, is its slim CI, or constant integration. One of the benefits of continuous integration, or CI, is that it can help build confidence in a team’s work, however, this kind of integration takes a lot of time to accomplish. With Slim CI, dbt Cloud is able to leverage a data team’s time by building only the modified parts of your dbt project in real time. 

Because Slim CI is only building and testing the modified parts of a dbt, it can help leverage time in favor of the data engineers while still giving valuable analytics. 

Conclusion

Dbt Cloud allows teams a new sense of focus and concentration that is rare for small data teams to be able to attain. With intelligent tools that are designed to help support small to medium-sized data teams, dbt Cloud can help your teams with day-to-day work like few tools can. Utilizing a dedicated IDE (integrated development environment), secure documentation hosting, as well as powerful orchestration and effective CI, dbt Cloud has earned its place in any competent and serious data stack.

If you are building your team’s data stack for the first time, then looking into dbt Cloud is something that could really push your data team in a good direction!