| Architecture |
Batch-oriented, rigid pipelines |
Flexible, cloud-native, real-time pipelines |
| Data Sources |
Limited (structured databases, files) |
Diverse (structured, semi-structured, unstructured, streaming) |
| Scalability |
Difficult to scale beyond fixed hardware |
Elastic scaling with cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP) |
| Processing |
Sequential, overnight batch jobs |
Real-time streaming + micro-batch processing |
| Tools & Technologies |
Legacy ETL tools (Informatica, SSIS) |
Modern frameworks (Apache Spark, Kafka, Dataflow, Synapse, BigQuery) |
| Business Value |
Delayed insights, reactive decision-making |
Instant insights, proactive decision-making |
| Cost Efficiency |
High infrastructure costs, limited reuse |
Optimized cloud costs, reusable pipelines |
| Governance |
Basic data validation |
Advanced governance, lineage, and compliance frameworks |