As seen on TDWI.org
With so much data in so many places, how can you quickly connect to the sources you need? Data virtualization may be the answer.
In a world where yesterday’s data is like yesterday’s news and users are accustomed to finding out “what’s happening right now” via social media drive-by platforms such as Twitter, virtualization is quickly becoming the ideal data management strategy.
Traditional data integration requires building a data warehouse and moving enterprise data to it on a periodic basis. Today’s modern data virtualization capabilities connect directly to live databases and pull information “just in time.” This solution delivers real-time results without the costs and delays of a complex ETL (extract, transform, and load) project. Business users now accustomed to instant real-time access to data in their consumer lives expect the same experience from their enterprise systems. Generation Y employees who have accessed the Internet from an early age are often surprised that ETL technologies are used to move data to a data warehouse before it can be analyzed, so business reports are delivering yesterday’s data.
A raving fan—that’s what every account manager wants in a customer. CRM software alone doesn’t do the trick, because the best relationships go beyond the interactions with account reps.