CDPs vs. data lakes: Decoding your data infrastructure | Census

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a database designed to collect, unify, and use customer data, providing a unified customer profile that can be accessed by other systems. However, CDPs are not without their share of problems and hidden costs, including vendor lock-in and limitations in data quality assurance. In contrast, a data lake is a raw, unstructured storage repository that holds vast amounts of data in its native format until it's needed, but requires technical expertise to make use of for customer data handling. By leveraging an existing data lake, businesses can potentially build their own composable CDP using tools like Census, which enables the transformation, segmentation, and syncing of customer data to various business tools, providing a true single source of truth and flexibility in data management.