Data virtualization
            

Gain a single view of real-time data from across your organization, including your legacy databases, to power modern business applications.

What is data virtualization?
Data virtualization is the process of integrating enterprise data from multiple sources and managing it with centralized security and governance to deliver a single virtual view of real-time data to business users and front-end solutions. Data virtualization is a subset of data integration and is commonly used within business intelligence, service-oriented architecture data services, cloud computing, enterprise search and master data management.

Why use data virtualization?
Your organization stores data in various databases, in many formats, across many platforms. Many data sources are in legacy systems, such as Adabas, Db2®, IMS, VSAM™ and Datacom®. Data virtualization tools are used to leverage these assets so you can connect, combine and consume the data anywhere in your organization.

With data virtualization you can display data from many disparate sources and formats in one application or interface. You can access real-time data from a variety of sources—whether a data warehouse, cloud platform, database or even an Excel® spreadsheet—in a single virtual view, without the need for duplication.

Presenting data from legacy, relational, big data and cloud to users in one place saves time and increases productivity. You can write standard (ANSI) SQL queries against a unified set of real-time data, and you won’t create workloads by moving data around or risking data errors, unlike the traditional ETL process. This means data virtualization solutions can help you maintain data quality. And unlike data federation, you don’t need to impose a single data model on your heterogeneous data. You can also write data updates back to the source systems, with transformation techniques in place to resolve differences in the source format.

Use cases include:

Business intelligence and analytics
Use data virtualization tools to combine databases across platforms (for example mainframe, UNIX® and cloud) and types (VSAM, relational and columnar databases) into a single view. Standard (ANSI) SQL queries will direct the system to parse the query into the required syntax, submit the query and return the result set.

Application development
Developers can more easily build applications that deliver complete and real-time enterprise information to business users. Data virtualization tools reduce amount of coding required, so developers can focus on delivering information faster and at scale.

Self-service tools
With access to a virtualized set of data, users can run reports, assess performance, analyze data, and run “what-if” analytics. These capabilities can accelerate product development, reduce IT overhead and streamline processes.

Data warehousing
Make sure your data warehouse contains the most up-to-date information from across your organization, while minimizing the impact on underlying systems. Using data virtualization tools, you can harness all the benefits of modern cloud data warehouses. You can replicate your enterprise data from virtually any source to the cloud, capturing changes from single or multiple data sources, without compromising source system uptime and performance.

Benefits of data virtualization using CONNX

Integrate all your data sources
The CONNX data virtualization solution creates a single view of one or more databases and allows real-time access to consume the data as it is being updated. CONNX offers 150+ database adapters, the industry's largest range, to deliver standard SQL connectivity to a wide spectrum of databases with a strength in legacy.

You can virtualize data from a wide spectrum of databases (legacy, relational, big data and cloud) residing on platforms such as mainframe, OpenVMS, iseries (AS/400), UNIX®, Linux®, Windows® and the desktop. Connect to any ODBC, OLE DB, JDBC®, J2EE® or .NET® compliant application, report writer or development tool.

Gain real-time access
Provide your applications and users with real-time access to multiple databases in a single view, regardless of the database type or platform. There is no data movement required, no data latency and no additional data warehouse or data lakes required.

Reduce data errors and workload
Data virtualization is different from data movement, such as the ETL process. Data virtualization with CONNX can leave your original data intact whether it’s in a mainframe, legacy, big data or cloud system, so you reduce the risk of errors and data loss, as well as workload.

Preserve full control and flexibility
Through metadata management, you create a lexicon that combines all your data into a single, comprehensible structure without altering the source structures.

Simplify and save on integration projects
Use CONNX to simplify SQL data access to legacy and other data sources. Unlock enterprise data everywhere, making it accessible to critical applications, business intelligence systems and web-enabled front ends. You can do this at a fraction of the time and cost of conventional in-house development by using CONNX.

Protect sensitive data
Manage database logins and secure access to the data in each system.

Make smarter decisions faster
Use insights based on a flow of real-time data from many disparate databases through a single platform.

Accelerate your shift to digital
Leverage your investment in legacy technology. Connecting that data to new data warehouses, web apps, business intelligence tools, big data and cloud platforms.

Take the next step

• Learn more about CONNX
  
• Watch webinar, “3 Secrets to Unlock Data Value”
  
• Request a custom CONNX demo