Whitepaper: Create a Successful Data Fabric for Your Enterprise
Change happens, and it happens with significant impact on every aspect of our world. To counter these seismic changes, our enterprises must be agile. They must be able to change their entire set of objectives and goals, along with supporting operating processes and decision-making capabilities almost overnight.
For decision-making, agility comes from the ability for business users to find and use analytical data and analytical assets for the many decisions (strategic and tactical) that must be made every day. Unfettered access to analytical data comes in the shape of a data fabric. Data fabric is a new term for an old idea: an all-encompassing analytic architecture that is understood and accessed, implemented and maintained, and ensures that all analytic data can flow throughout the entire enterprise.
A tall order but, thankfully, with the advances in data management, storage, analysis, and access technologies, creating a data fabric is not only possible, but it has become mandatory for enterprises in today’s post-pandemic marketplaces.
This whitepaper begins by defining what a data fabric is, along with its benefits. The extended analytics architecture (XAA) is used to illustrate the analytical components within the fabric. That is followed by a diagram of how data must flow (either physic or virtual) from one component to another seamless, thus supporting access to and creating the ultimate analytical assets.
The next section walks the reader through the set of processes or capabilities needed to give the user a rational way to access the environment. This also shows the reader how to understand and create needed analytical assets, and the ability to decide with confidence. Within each process, the technological functionality needed to create and maintain a functioning data fabric environment is discussed.
The last section of the paper discusses things to think about when implementing a data fabric for all analytical needs. Using the proper set of technology can mitigate, if not eliminate, many of these challenges.
Meet the Author: Claudia Imhoff, Ph.D.
A thought leader, visionary, and practitioner. Claudia Imhoff, is an internationally recognized expert on analytics, business intelligence, and the architectures to support these initiatives. Dr. Imhoff has co-authored five books on these subjects and writes articles (totaling more than 150) for technical and business magazines. Claudia is the President of Intelligent Solutions, Inc. and the Founder of the Boulder BI Brain Trust, a consortium of internationally recognized independent analysts and experts. You can follow them on Twitter at #BBBT or become a subscriber at www.bbt.us.