“On February 16 2021, Erik Fransen, Co-Founder of Connected Data Group, participated as a TIBCO Silver Partner and TIBCO Data Virtualization expert, in the TIBCO Data Virtualization Talk – Spain, a 40-minutes webinar with a focus on how to accelerate Business Value with Data Virtualization.

Right after the welcome and words of introduction, Bob Eve (Senior Data Management Strategist, Thought Leadership and Digital Content Executive and TIBCO TDV Expert) kick-started this Webinar with a relevant and challenging question to the participants, “Is data your competitive advantage or is it a bottleneck to your business success?”

The outcome, split in a technical IT-perspective and a more innovative business point of view, can be summarized in the following statement: To drive revenue we require data! All sorts of data and in an easy and efficient way. With that in mind you can say; Data & Analytics is the new competitive battleground. Businesses that take advantage will be the leaders, those who don’t will fall behind. A significant challenge as Rob Eve stated:

“Turning data into advantage is a proven challenge you know. On the demand side most organization analytic and applications requirements, tools and teams are exploding. On the supply side there is more data than ever, and data are now more-widely distributed across all manners of traditional, big data, internet of things and cloud repositories.”

Gone are these days you can try to centralize all your data in a Datawarehouse. To achieve better business outcomes more quickly it’s time to add something new. Something more responsive and more data driven. That something is called Data Virtualization.

Analyst firms such as Gartner, Forrester and IDC are recommending Data Virtualization as a way to overcome data bottlenecks like:

• Access – as DV gives you access to all your data wherever it is stored
• Federation – as DV allows you to combine data sets to provide a complete picture
• Abstraction – as it helps you convert the data from your IT format and syntax into something your business can understand and consume.
• Provision – so you deliver consistent, high quality data to the business through an easy to use catalog with appropriate security and control.

In our highly distributed data supply and data demand world, Data Virtualization allows you to modernize your data architecture, Jose Maria Gomez Hidalgo (TIBCO Sr. Solution Consultant Spain) continues. Compared to previous data integration approaches, where we rely on ETL-processes, Data Virtualization works without data replication, offers more data agility with less efforts and reduced costs.

Data Virutalization also complements to existing data management technology, as was shown by Erik Fransen (Connected Data Group Data Virtualization Project Expert) in a number of typical business friendly use cases that decrease the need for replication, hide the technical complexity of data and provides a governed self-service function with business-friendly data views:

• Virtual Data Layer – one single virtual source for all Enterprise data
• Data as a Service – one central point of data access in an abstract and secure business layer
• Logical Data Warehouse – one logical and consistent layer on top of all technical data management sources to optimize queries using MPP and intelligent cashing technology

These benefits help both business and IT, Bob Eve told. “By implementing a virtual data layer in your architecture, you provide consistent, well-governed data that is easy to access and use. It allows you to isolate consumer-requirements from IT-efforts while fulfilling your analytic data needs at scale with breakthrough speed and cost effectiveness.”  

Data Virtualization is a very mature technique, Bob continues, it’s used by world’s largest telephone companies, financial institutions, pharmacies and different kind of industries. It helps business teams to focus on how to use (near) real-time data in vs. where to find it and technical teams to focus on how to provision and manage data with less engineering time and enhanced governance and security.

To take advantage of the latest data you need a business-relevant data delivery. A scalable solution that supports diverse analytics and application demands driven by multiple lines of business and up to thousands of users. “Customers typically start with small step projects and over time expand usage to a broader enterprise-scale architecture as they build up their skills and inventory of virtualized datasets.” Erik emphasizes.

To learn from others’ successes, Gail Fernandes (Global Alliance Head at Accenture) and Miquel Alves (Technology Delivery Manager at Accenture) shared a customer case study. By describing the process of implementing Data Virtualization as a solution which complemented its existing data sources to meet specific business objectives, such as centralized and unified view of data, reduced access to operating systems, real-time data update and access, participants can now map their own path to adoption data sharing success.

After showing the business approach, the challenges, solutions, highlights and the client credentials several questions, from “What is the value of having a party like Accenture in a Data Virtualization project?” to “How do you build the business case about Data Virtualization?” were answered before the session was closed with the final conclusion; Data Virtualization adoption is a low risk to drive greater business impact from your data.

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Connected Data Group
T.    +31 6 40 40 50 75
E.    info@connecteddatagroup.com