How Data Virtualization Saves Agencies Significant Resources

Data has become foundational for government agencies, and turning data into diamonds is the key to success. In order to achieve this, agencies must be able to collect and use data from several internal/external sources accurately, securely, and frequently to minimize manual entry and duplication.

However, this can be a challenge with the federal government being one of the biggest producers of data. Serving the right data from various sources into an easy to use and efficient platform requires careful considerations on how the agencies will connect, collect, aggregate, share, secure and present the data in a timely manner.

For agencies that have identified Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) as a key solution, new, modern technologies can improve the overall data management experience in support of overall strategic missions and objectives. With ever-growing needs of sharing and receiving data from partners imposes serious data storage requirements that keeps growing. The best data management solutions provide an open and flexible architecture with vendor-neutral and platform-independent components, so that it can evolve with an agency’s business needs.

EDW tools typically replicate data from several external sources using point-to-point connections with manual data-entry, flat files, bulk upload, and various other means. The duplication of data is a prerequisite whether it is determined to be useful or not after it is processed, which includes additional IT and human resources.  It would be far more efficient to first determine if the data is useful and only then copy over.

This can be achieved through a Data Virtualization (DV) platform that brings several benefits compared to a traditional approach. DV provides a unique approach to data integration and management that transcends simple data access to act as full-fledged data discovery and search system, complete with data security. DV also enables agencies to get rid of the point-to-point integration with external data sources, and the challenges that come with it. The in-memory processing of DV platforms allows agencies to retrieve data in real-time only when needed, process the data on demand, and copy only the useful data into the EDW. This approach provides a virtual window to the data source for a real-time examination opportunity and therefore minimize and/or eliminate “blind” data replication requirements. As a result, it can save agencies enormous data storage cost and associated resources.