More than ever, companies are relying upon customer data to step up in crowded marketplaces. Gaining knowledge of the customer base can be taxing, but there are new technologies constantly being developed that allow for any data source to become a fountain of information to forward a business. This is how data virtualization platforms are becoming game-changers for growing companies.
What is data virtualization?
Data virtualization is the use of multiple data sources, funneled into an analytics system, that allows for real-time evaluation of critical decision-making data. Data virtualization solutions provide a modern data layer that enables users the ability to access, transform and deliver datasets at record speed while keeping costs down. This technology allows for data access that is far more immediate than traditional databases and big data sources, without the need for physical warehousing and extract/transform/load (ETL) time needed in traditional data integration.
Users are able to take this business data and apply it to a range of analytics in real-time. Data virtuality users are assured that data is consistent and that data quality is always at its peak. Data virtualization software also allows for more business-friendly formats, straying from native IT structures and syntax. This supports multiple lines of business and hundreds of projects with thousands of technical details. This can be done with common data sources through real-time access like packaged apps, data warehouses, cloud data, and even Excel files.
Capabilities of Data Virtualization
Data virtualization technology provides businesses with new capabilities with data management. Take a company like Go Wholesale that allows for businesses to purchase high-quality new and refurbished electronics featuring popular tech categories and brands. Data models allow for them to monitor inventory, evaluate wholesale prices in the business-to-business marketplace, and monitor what products are drawing the most interest.
With agile design and development, organizations of any size are able to discover hidden relationships through real-time data. This helps companies to rely on data integration to determine inventory through sales, traffic to the website, and other business processes. With high-performance runtime, data virtualization software can take a customer request and deliver an immediate result in varied forms from varied data sources, avoiding replication.
Data virtualization technology caches essential data, as software invokes a request with an optimized query being executed to boost performance and limit constraints on networks. These business intelligence tools allow for users to categorize all available data and find a specific scope that a user may be seeking at that moment. This empowers businesses to do more with their data and ramp up efficiency for their business practices across the board.
Benefits of Data Virtualization
Perhaps the greatest benefit of data virtualization is how it helps to accelerate the value of your business. Analytics applications are implemented sooner, taking enterprise data and getting a better and quicker understanding of what this means for their bottom line. This business insight improvement offers a more complete and up-to-the-minute database, requiring less of a workload to properly extract the information that you need.
With less workload, it also ends up costing less for the development of the data virtualization platform. Reusable data services and interactive development help to improve the quality, and it avoids the need to go back to the drawing board in reworking a project through this architecture. With a lower data management infrastructure cost, there are fewer expenses, and fewer licenses to buy, helping to bring down maintenance costs. Perhaps the best part about data virtualization is that it is usable throughout nearly every line of business. From manufacturing and healthcare to financial services and government, data virtualization is the best choice to put your company forward.