London Calling: Data Virtualization is Hot in the UK

I just returned from two weeks in the United Kingdom where I met with TIBCO customers, partners, employees as well as Gartner analysts to discuss TIBCO’s data intelligence offerings, in general, and TIBCO Data Virtualization, in particular.

I was struck by how data virtualization has moved to the forefront of everyone’s awareness as enterprises are realizing how data virtualization can be used to provide the datasets so essential to analytics success.  Said another way, data virtualization in Europe has crossed the chasm from early adoption to mainstream. Here are a just a couple examples.

London Data Virtualization Seminar

At a Data Virtualization seminar at TIBCO’s London office, over sixty people came to learn about how data virtualization was impacting enterprises in the UK today. This rich agenda included the following presentations:

• Overcoming Analytic Data Bottlenecks with Data Virtualization, which included examples from Financial Services and Energy companies
• Data Virtualization Case Study 1 – How Save the Children UK Transformed into a Digital Organization
• Data Virtualization Case Study 2 – Making Digital Transformation a Reality for a Major UK Retailer
• TIBCO® Data Virtualization Demonstration: Better Customer Churn Analysis

Although the many use cases described were unique, the common themes were teamwork and agility. In every case, business analysts would identify a business opportunity. They would call on IT’s data engineers who used data virtualization to speed the required data collection, transformation, and delivery.  With the right data in hand, the business analysts would then analyze It to gain key insights and drive better business outcomes. From start to finish these outcomes were achieved far faster and with less effort than ever before.  

Gartner Data and Analytics Summit, London

Data virtualization was a key topic at this three-day event at the O2 Event Center that was attended by over 1600 delegates.  Five sessions included data virtualization as a major or minor theme including:

• Use Data Virtualization to Increase Business Agility and Connect Your Universe of Data
• The State of Data Management: Balancing Collecting Data and Connecting to Data Is the Future
• Data Management Solutions for Analytics: Going Beyond the Data Warehouse
• Reshape Your Data Integration Strategy for Bringing Order to Data Chaos
• Adopt a Data Hub Strategy: Stop Blindly Integrating Data and Start With Governing It

Common to these sessions was Gartner’s recognition that enterprises need new approaches such as data virtualization to address the significant challenges caused by the overwhelming complexity inherent in their data and analytics landscapes today.   

Is Data Virtualization Right for You?

While data virtualization is a hot topic in the UK, should it be in your enterprise?   

To help you decide, check out Ten Things You Need to Know About Data Virtualization where you can learn 10 core truths about data virtualization including:

1. What is Data Virtualization?
2. Why Use Data Virtualization?
3. What Are the Benefits of Data Virtualization?
4. Who Uses Data Virtualization?
5. How Does Data Virtualization Work?
6. When to Use Data Virtualization for an Analytic Project?
7. When to Use Data Virtualization to Support Multiple Analytic Projects?
8. When Not to Use Data Virtualization?
9. What is the Business Case for Data Virtualization?
10. How to Deploy Data Virtualization?

And if you are a TIBCO Analytics customer interested in how TIBCO Data Virtualization can help drive even better insights, join us for our upcoming webinar.