In a world where data equals opportunity, the right data at the right time in the right form seems like a dream come true. This is why organizations like yours strive to make data easy to find, understand, and use. Frictionless data access is the goal.
But, because your data is so complex in form and format—and distributed across a diverse landscape of applications, databases, marts, warehouses, and lakes, both on-premises and in the cloud—simply accessing your data is a huge challenge.
How big is this challenge? Here are some numbers from peer organizations:
- According to IDC’s 2019 Data Integration and Integrity End User Survey, “25 percent of analyst time is spent searching for data.”1
- A 2020 Wisdom Of Clouds Data Catalog Study by Dresner Advisory Services noted that “Fifty-one percent of respondents indicate analytic consumers and use cases have difficulty (impossible, difficult, or somewhat difficult) locating/accessing relevant analytic content.”2
- Dresner also found that “the harder it is for business intelligence (BI) users / use cases to find and access content, the higher the likelihood that BI initiatives will not be successful.”2
Data Fabrics for Frictionless Data Access
Overcoming this challenge is not easy if you stick to your existing data analytics strategy, architecture, and tools.
You need to find a better way. But which better way? That better way is a data fabric.
TIBCO defines a data fabric as a modern distributed data architecture that includes shared data assets and optimized data fabric pipelines that you can use to address today’s data challenges in a unified way.
A data fabric is expansive, spanning:
- Data for All Users and Use Cases: Provides timely, consistent, and trusted data for your wide range of analytic, operational, and governance use cases, as well business self-service users.
- Data from Any and All Sources: Accesses, combines, and transforms both in-motion and at-rest data from across your diverse, distributed data landscape using metadata, models, and pipelines.
- Data that Spans Any Environment: Flexibly spans your distributed on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.
A data fabric is also achievable, especially when you get help from highly respected independent analysts such as Rick van der Lans.
Rick’s Recipe for Data Fabric Success
In Data Fabrics for Frictionless Data Access, A Technical Whitepaper, Rick outlines the recipe for building a successful data fabric. Within it, he describes a service-oriented approach for constructing a data fabric using proven data management tools, including data virtualization servers, metadata management systems, master data management systems, and complex event processors. He also describes in detail how these high-level tools provide the twelve key capabilities you need for frictionless data access, including:
- Data preparation, such as transformations, aggregations, filters, and joins
- Adaptable logic
- High performance
- Data access by many data consumption forms
- Access to all the data sources
- Processing of all types of data
- Data security and privacy
- Real-time data access
- Read and write data access
- Data minimization
- Event processing
- Technical and business metadata management
- Master and reference data management
Turn Your Dream Into Reality
American statesman Colin Powell once said, “A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination, and hard work.”
This whitepaper outlines how to do the hard work. You can also attend Rick’s webinar for additional guidance.
- End-User Survey Results: Deployment and Data Intelligence in 2019, Stewart Bond, IDC, Doc # US45652419, Nov 2019
- 2020 Wisdom Of Clouds Data Catalog Study by Dresner Advisory Services
