For any data-centric organisation, data fabric is an essential element and is quite relevant to enterprise data management and enterprise data integration. According to Gartner, by 2024, about 25% of every data management vendor will be providing data fabric solutions. IBM has also stated that by 2023, organisations using data fabrics will be dynamically connecting, optimising and automating data management processes to reduce time and integrate data delivery by 30%.
Data fabric is an end-to-end data integration and management solution consisting of architecture, data management and integration software, and shared data that helps organisations manage their data. A data fabric provides a unified, consistent user experience and access to data for any member of an organisation worldwide and in real-time.
According to Dan DeMers, CEO of Cinchy, data fabric is “the first real evolution of data since the relational database appeared in the 1970s.” Data fabric solutions can essentially stitch together various data tools with a consistent set of capabilities and functionality, allowing the business to empower the data modelling process.
Let us look at the top data fabric solutions/tools available today:
SAP’s data fabric solution
This data fabric solution consists of the combined capabilities of SAP Data Intelligence and SAP HANA. SAP Data Intelligence transforms collected data into valuable information, which can be accessed anytime using reference data and SAP Data Intelligence is a data management solution. As the data orchestration layer of SAP’s Business Technology Platform, it transforms distributed data sprawls into vital data insights, delivering innovation at scale. SAP HANA provides abilities to the data fabric solution with built-in features to access data. It also provides smart access with which queries can be sent to external data sources such as external databases, web services, etc., cost-effectively.
Cinchy
Cinchy is considered to be the world’s first autonomous data fabric. Inspired by the human brain, Cinchy’s data-centric architecture makes data silos and data integration obsolete by managing data as a network. Cinchy has a unique approach to data fabric solution that is built on Dataware. This solution is a secure tool for solving challenges as it has access to data and real-time synchronisation among the tools. Cinchy works on connected fragmented sources of data on the level of network architecture. Highly-regulated organisations like banks, credit unions, and insurers use Cinchy to deliver hundreds of new technologies like customer experiences, workflows, automation, and advanced analytics in half the time.
Denodo
Denodo is one of the major providers of data visualisation tools marketplace and the only data virtualisation solution to be provisioned as a virtual image on Amazon AWS Marketplace. It offers high-performance data integration and abstraction of big data, enterprise, cloud, unstructured and real-time data services. The data fabric solutions offered by Denodo complies with policies and regulations and also offers security, data privacy and data protection to enterprises. Denodo offers security policies in the data layer that can be extended to both the cloud as well as on-premise environments.
K2View Data Fabric
K2View data fabric offers a unified platform for data integration, transformation, enrichment, orchestration, and delivery. This data fabric supports real-time operations while the fragmented data for each business entity is unified into a micro-DB to deliver a holistic view. K2View is scalable and can support hundreds of millions of micro-DBs concurrently via a distributed architecture. Global 2000 companies, including AT&T, Vodafone, Sky, and Hertz, deploy K2View in weeks to deliver outstanding multi-channel customer service, minimise churn, achieve hyper-segmentation and assure data compliance.
IBM Cloud Pak for Data
IBM Cloud Pak for Data simplifies and automates the process of data collection and analysis of data by accelerating the infusion of AI in the business. This data fabric solution can connect data everywhere, run workloads, and build, deploy, and manage AI at scale in hybrid cloud environments. This solution can also function effectively in hybrid-cloud environments using AutoSQL to gather and deliver trusted data to organisations. The intelligent data fabric in IBM Cloud Pak for Data enables – automated distributed queries at scale without data movement; automated discovery and understanding of business-ready data; automated universal privacy and usage policies across the data ecosystem; and optimised model training, accuracy and explainability.
NetApp Data Fabric
NetApp’s Fabric Orchestrator is a data fabric solution that is mainly focused on providing simplicity and agility. The solution increases operational efficiency in both on-premises and cloud environments by providing tools to build and manage data fabric. This solution, being AI-powered, reduces the chances of financial risks. To gain agility and scalability, the solution can also be deployed on cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services, Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, etc. With NetApp’s Fabric Orchestrator, virtual machines and containerised environments present on-premise can be automated.
Atlan
Atlan’s data workspace platform offers data cataloguing and discovery; data quality and profiling; data lineage and governance; and data exploration and integration. The product offers a Google-like search interface, automatic data profiling, and a searchable business glossary for generating a common understanding of data. Users using Atlan can also manage data usage and adoption across an ecosystem via granular governance and access controls, no matter where the data goes.
