Considerations Before Building Your Data Fabric

Considerations Before Building Your Data Fabric

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In response to the increasing number of data sources and silos, organizations are turning to one of the fastest-growing data and analytics technologies available—data fabric.

A data fabric is a modern, distributed data architecture that includes shared data assets and optimized pipelines to address data challenges in a unified way. It is not a single product or platform you buy off-the-shelf, then deploy. Instead, it’s composed of best-in-class solutions, loosely coupled into a highly cohesive fabric that uses a common distributed architecture, metadata management, data integration, and optimized data delivery capabilities.

The benefits of a data fabric are many, quantifiable, and long-lasting. However, data fabric is not a one-and-done implementation effort. Instead, it’s more of a journey.

The Data Fabric Journey

Businesses need a secure, efficient, unified data environment. It must be future-proof. A data fabric provides this. A data fabric delivers a unified, consistent user experience, as well as access to data for any member of the organization worldwide, all in real-time. With a data fabric, data-driven organizations are able to: 

• Democratize data access and empower users with all the data required to make faster and more accurate business decisions.
• Support multiple, diverse users and use cases with a modern distributed data architecture and shared data assets. This includes assets spanning on-premise, cloud, and hybrid cloud data.
• Quickly embrace new data and analytics advancements, further separating the organization from its competition.

Watch: Data Fabric explained.

Building a Data Fabric

Data architectures are challenged to keep pace with real-world complexities: more data sources, emerging data silos, and constantly changing business needs. This is why data fabric has become so critical.

A data fabric weaves together three core elements:

1. Optimized and converged data and metadata management, data integration, and data delivery capabilities.  
2. Shared data assets that support all users and use cases.
3. A flexible, distributed data architecture.

Simply put, a data fabric supports more use cases and more data types and methods than other technologies. It is better equipped to handle converged datasets and deliver shared data assets. Plus, it allows for greater deployment flexibility. 

To learn more, download this Data Fabric eBook. 

The Joys of the Data Fabric Journey

Data fabric helps organizations solve their most complex data problems and enables countless new use cases by managing their data regardless of the many applications, platforms, and locations the data is stored.

However, a data fabric is not obtained from an off-the-shelf product or platform. It is not plug-and-play. Data fabric comprises both technology and your organization’s most important data, including its master data and reference data. Plus, it includes the tools needed to offer self-service, automated processes, and importantly, to deliver a unified view of your data in real-time. 

Gone are the silos. Gone are the inefficiencies. Achieving this and maintaining it transforms an organization’s data management. Organizations that have begun their data fabric journey often begin by implementing data virtualization and data catalogs, addressing immediate pain points. 

A Sum Greater Than Its Parts

It’s called data fabric, though “quilt” may be more visually apt, with new and existing pieces linked together to form something significantly greater than its many parts. 

Traditional data integration cannot satisfy the demands of real-time connectivity, self-service, and automated response. This is only achieved by integrating, processing, and transforming data, which delivers a holistic view of everything important to your business, such as customers, partners, and products. 

It’s called data fabric, though “quilt” may be more visually apt, with new and existing pieces linked together to form something significantly greater than its many parts. Click To Tweet

Data fabric modernizes an organization’s data management, metadata management, data integration, and data delivery capabilities. With a data fabric, organizations can also fully harness the power of cloud computing, and meet the demands of their partners and customers. 

Are you ready? Find out how TIBCO can support your Data Fabric journey.