Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past decade, you’ve likely heard a lot about business intelligence (BI) and analytics. Companies collect and produce massive amounts of data, and big data analytics enables companies to gain actionable insights from their hordes of data.
One of the challenges many companies face is having the right tools to manage all their data and maintain its integrity across disparate data sources. That’s why some businesses have begun implementing data virtualization to enhance their business intelligence and analytics. Continue reading to learn how data virtualization tools can help your company get the most out of its BI infrastructure.
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Data virtualization provides a single point of access for all databases
Can you count all the data sources your company utilizes for its BI and analytics infrastructures? We didn’t think so. One of the great things about data virtualization is it enables data scientists to create a single access point for all of your company’s databases. Indeed, the best data virtualization tools make data federation easy, enabling business users to gain quick access to critical data and make better and faster business decisions.
Data virtualization makes data integration time- and cost-efficient
Before data virtualization software, data scientists had to manually perform data migration and integration via extract, transfer, and load (ETL). If you’re not familiar with ETL processes, the most important things to know are they’re expensive, time-consuming, and not much fun for your data management team. However, data virtualization tools make data integration simple by employing automation to streamline the process.
Data virtualization enables real-time data insights
Another challenge for small businesses is getting the data they need promptly. Business moves at the speed of light these days, and business users need real-time (or near real-time) access to their big data insights. Data virtualization software creates a data pipeline that formats and processes data on the fly, enabling business users to access data at the moment it becomes extant and relevant.
You can use data virtualization to create a logical data warehouse
When you’re collecting and utilizing data from every corner of your operating system and the internet, you end up with a lot of varying data models, making it difficult to process data. Data virtualization systems enable data managers to create a virtual layer with a single data model, also known as a data warehouse. Data warehouses transcend data silos and put data into a single format, enabling you to see all your data in a single view. It also makes it simple to add and format new data sources.
Data virtualization ensures data quality
Finally, virtualization tools ensure data integrity. As we’ve mentioned throughout this article, dealing with disparate datasets provides many challenges, and data quality is one of them. Data virtualization tools eliminate the need for data movement and replication, ensuring data is accurate and one-of-a-kind.
Big data makes the world go ’round, and there’s no better data management tool than a comprehensive data virtualization platform. Data virtualization tools can provide a single point of access for all your databases. Furthermore, it makes data integration much more efficient and effective than ETL operations. Data virtualization systems provide access to real-time data analytics insights and enable data scientists to create data warehouses to store data for analytics purposes. Possibly the most important thing about data virtualization software is it ensures data quality and security.
As you can see, data virtualization is invaluable to business intelligence processes and infrastructures. TIBCO is one of the industry leaders in data virtualization technology, and its systems can help you maximize your BI and promote better performance in your business operations. In a time where data is golden and commerce has largely gone virtual, what could help your business more than data virtualization software?
