S
Suzanne Rose
Guest
Data integration is a crucial part of every Big Data strategy.
Data drives decisions. That piece of wisdom is often taken for granted, but businesses still seem to struggle with it. They continuously gather data, but rarely do they use it to its fullest potential. They track clicks on their websites and sensor readings from Internet of Things (IoT) devices that capture important customer buying behavior, geolocation data and other business-related information. Then they shovel it all into a data warehouse where web traffic and sales data and data from SaaS applications all have their own, separate silos and languages.
Then, when businesses have a question like, “How did our latest marketing campaign affect leads?” they run into a problem. When data is stored separately, it is very difficult to bring it together when it is needed. That’s why, according to new research by Forrester, data integration is a crucial part of every Big Data strategy.
Integrate Your Data, Unify Your Vision
In “Market Overview: Big Data Integration,” Forrester discusses the problem: As more and more data sources like social media, IoT, geolocation, SaaS applications and click streams become relevant to business, the temptation is to simply dump it all into Hadoop and forget about it. It may be siloed into Hadoop clusters, but those silos will soon become unwieldy as the torrent of data rages on. This leads to a host of problems: from fragmentation, security and compliance risks, and a need for new skills and resources; to serious threats to efficiency and performance, especially when trying to support data in real time. There needs to be a way for businesses to access, share and integrate this data and get it under control.
Business Intelligence Matters
The benefits of adopting a Big Data integration strategy are numerous. First, properly integrated data provides an accurate 360°view into your company and works with all your analytics tools, so you can quickly get the business intelligence (BI) you need about your organization and your customers.
In a rapidly changing business environment, the ability to respond to BI keeps you ahead of the competition. By bringing together data from all over, you are able to more accurately see how one aspect of your business affects and interacts with all the rest. When your revenue goes up or down, you can easily understand exactly why that is happening and quickly change your approach with high-performance data integration that easily connects to your BI and analytics tools.
You are also able to drill deeper into individual aspects of business. You can, for example, cross-reference customer information with usage data from one of your mobile apps for insight around how apps are being used, who is using them and how to quickly respond to these customers.
Vendors Make the Difference
Forrester shows that there is a serious need for better data integration, and that the field is growing rapidly, but how do you catch that wave?
Read what Forrester has to say about leading-edge technologies and data integration partners based on information from Informatica, SAS, Cloudera, IBM and Oracle.
Get Started Now with Data Integration
Consider partnering with Progress® DataDirect® for high-performance, scalable data connectivity for all your data sources, from Hadoop and NoSQL, NewSQL and relational databases to cloud sources and everything in between. To get started, sign up for a free trial.
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Author information
Blogger and Futurist at Progress Software
Suzanne is a media futurist who loves to write about technology, the Internet of Things (IoT), DIY application development, citizen developers, big data, data integration and so much more.
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