We’ve covered what a data platform is (as a reminder, it is “a cloud-native platform capable of cost-effectively ingesting, integrating, transforming, and managing an almost unlimited amount of data of any type data in order to facilitate analytics outcomes”), what drives the need for a data platform, and how changes in data will shape your data platform. Now we will explore in more detail why a cloud data platform provides more capabilities as opposed to a data warehouse–only architecture. In this chapter, we will equip you with the knowledge necessary to make a solid argument for a data platform and will walk you through several examples demonstrating the difference between the two approaches (data warehouse–only and data platform).