Data fabric increases trust in analytic insights

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Data long ago left the confines of the data center and is spread across core, edge, and multi-cloud environments. The rapid growth of data continues with a 26% year over year increase in diverse types of data. The tools and technologies used to engineer, govern, protect, and consume data have changed. Data has been disrupted, and the events of 2020 only accelerated the need for companies to change their approach to data management. 

From the assembly line to the boardroom, every layer of any organization now depends on direct access to worldwide data to increase the competitiveness of the business. Data management’s importance has grown so much over the past year that a recent 451 Research study shows 85% of enterprises interviewed are planning to increase both focus and budgets to new data management and analytic initiatives. Yet, hurdles remain.

Traditional data management solutions are unable to keep pace with data’s growth as well as its distributed nature, which increases operational complexity by adding data silos. Data access models for these solutions focus on denying access rather than democratizing it through self-service. The combination of data access and more data silos does little to increase confidence in analytics provided by these traditional solutions. 

Applications and users need trusted data pipelines to ensure the right business decisions are made--a new approach to data management.  

DataOps techniques are being deployed by organizations to accelerate the value of data analytics, data science, and machine learning through a combination of automated and orchestrated processes. The goal of DataOps is to deliver a continuous data pipeline to applications and users but it does nothing to address the manual integration process that remains across core, edge, and multi-cloud environments.

Enter the modern data fabric, which enables DataOps by automating and orchestrating the processing, transformation, security, and protection of data across distributed sources.  

A data fabric delivers a comprehensive way to solve a big challenge: How do you integrate all your data into a single, scalable platform then cleanse and transform it for use by data scientists and developers?

Just as a loom weaves multiple threads to form fabric, a data fabric weaves distributed data into a single repository to provide a trusted source of truth that simplifies management and analytics while democratizing access. A single data source is important to technical, scientific, and business teams because it increases accuracy. This in turn increases the ability to make confident decisions at every organizational level.

I am not describing some future vision, but rather an existing proven technology that for the last five years has been managing large-scale analytic projects worldwide.   

HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric is a proven software-defined data store and file system designed to make data-driven applications a reality for today’s digital enterprise. It delivers a semantic layer that sits above data lakes and warehouses to deliver a consistent foundation to map and deliver enterprise-wide access to a single source of truth.  It weaves any data type or source into a single, enterprise-wide layer that ingests, processes, and stores data once. Next, it makes it available for reuse across multiple use cases.  

HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric lets organizations process, manage, and analyze almost any amount of data from multiple sources; then it enables real-time data access to apps and tools using an array of interfaces.  Here is a real customer example:

A car manufacturer has been able to accelerate development of their autonomous driving functions with ready access to global test data. With the help of HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric, data from test vehicles around the world is quickly synchronized across the company’s cloud storage infrastructure.  This enables prompt data sharing across development sites, allowing data scientists and developers to efficiently analyze and know what to test for or refine. With direct access to data from current and legacy systems, the company’s data scientists and developers can get the information they need without having to switch applications or use a new interface. This has allowed the vendor to integrate data from legacy applications into its autonomous driving initiative.

Your enterprise needs a solution that manages your entire data lifecycle across multiple technologies and addresses all your data management needs--not just a single tool stack or use case, which is only a piece of the puzzle.

HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric is a platform that spans core, edge, and multi-cloud deployments. It simplifies management of petabyte-size data sets with platform-level automation and orchestration for data movement, business continuity, and security. It provides the following benefits:    

Increase confidence in business decisions by modernizing your data management model.  Read the solution overview to learn more about Ezmeral Data Fabric or go deeper with this technical brief.