Overcoming Cloud Data Silos with Data Virtualization
Blog: The Tibco Blog
Reading Time: 2 minutes
My friend Rick van der Lans, the world’s most published author on data virtualization, and I have collaborated dozens of times—on whitepapers, articles, seminars, webinars, and more—over the past 15 years. The latest is Rick’s whitepaper, Overcoming Cloud Data Silos with Data Virtualization.
Beyond our shared interest in data virtualization, Rick and I both love the late sixties folk-rock era led by Bob Dylan, the Birds, CSNY, and other legends like Joni Mitchell. And, it turns out, as we brainstormed about how best to describe cloud opportunities and challenges, a stanza from Mitchell’s top 10 hit “Both Sides, Now” repeatedly came to mind. She captured exactly what most are experiencing and a way forward:
“I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all”
Advantages on One Side, Misconceptions on the Other
Using cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud to drive more value from their data has become one of the top technology strategies at many organizations today. This is why it is so important to “look at clouds from both sides now.”
On one side, there are many benefits. In the paper and upcoming webinar, Rick describes several advantages, including:
- Unburdening the organization
- Data processing scalability and performance
- Flexible fee structure
Yet, many misconceptions, or using Mitchell’s words “still somehow…cloud’s illusions,” remain. These include:
- The cloud is one centralized environment
- The cloud stores all the data
- The cloud is a homogenous environment
- The cloud implies data Integration
Common to the first three is a belief that the cloud helps eliminate your data silos. In fact, at most organizations cloud adoption introduces even more silos. And as a result, rather than reducing your data integration workload, moving to the cloud actually increases your data integration requirements.
Common is a belief that the cloud helps eliminate your data silos. In fact, at most organizations cloud adoption introduces even more silos. As a result, moving to the cloud actually increases your data integration requirements.
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Considering Four Cloud Data Integration Options
In the whitepaper, Rick describes and compares four approaches for integrating cloud data silos in a sensible and practical way:
- Data integration with applications
- Data integration with a data lake
- Data integration with a data warehouse
- Data integration with data virtualization
Each approach is evaluated based on four aspects: data integration, query performance, data security and privacy, and development productivity of new reports and applications.
While each cloud data integration approach has its merits, especially for selected data integration patterns, “from up and down and still somehow,” data virtualization scored best overall.
Learn How to Overcome Cloud Data Silos with Data Virtualization
Don’t be like those who ”really don’t know clouds at all.”
Join Rick, Stephen Archut, and me on July 16th at 8 a.m. PDT for our webinar on Overcoming Cloud Data Silos with Data Virtualization where we will do a deeper dive and address your questions directly.
To “know clouds” even better, check out Rick’s whitepaper.
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