Threading new seams into the ‘empowered’ data fabric
Connect, unify & predict.
You can almost smell the cellophane wrapping on the technology conference T-shirts as every vendor worth its salt emblazons its give-aways with phases like this.
Tibco’s latest updates and enhancements to its Unify data management portfolio, including its TIBCO Data Virtualisation and TIBCO EBX products.
The company says that these products “dramatically empower an organisation’s data fabric”… and if that doesn’t sound like marketing, then nothing will.
CEO to IT team: “Hi guys, is our data fabric what you would be happy to call dramatically empowered these days?”
IT team to CEO: “Umm, well, we’re using new cloud connectors and improved processing capacity to ingest and crunch vast amounts of data, so… you could say that.”
CEO to IT team: “Good work, carry on, don’t mind me.”
Due to the delays experiences in trying to work on the production, development, testing, tuning, maintenance and shaping of data tools – rather than the running operation of them and the subsequent innovation that can come what that thing the industry loves to call data-driven insights – Tibco says it has focused on usability specifically.
What kind of usability?
Tibco’s Mark Palmer, senior vice president of engineering says that it’s all about improved user interfaces and low-code implementation, so users with little to no technical knowledge can take full advantage of these products and work to innovate with data.
Palmer explains how the enhancements to Tibco EBX process hundreds of millions of records, which should help Master Data Management (MDM) efforts.
“Organisations can now take advantage of embedded web interfaces and low-code scripting across EBX, easily creating or designing custom forms, processes and rules with little to no SQL knowledge. In addition, EBX now has graphical editors to match, merge and analyse data, along with new built-in services incorporated into the workflow, such as data lineage,” said Palmer and team.
Tibco Data Virtualisation delivers a newly simplified web-based interface, which is intended to allow business users to self-serve and transform their data. There is also a searchable data catalogue, so users can view and find data sources across their organisational silos, ensuring data is reused to the fullest extent.
The solution also provides out-of-the-box connectivity to popular cloud data sources, including Amazon S3, Azure Data Lake Storage and Google BigQuery.
“Many data management solutions in the market promise they are easy to use, quick to implement, and will empower workforces with new access to crucial business data. However, it can still take days or weeks for departments to gain access to the data they need, perform analyses and make the data actionable,” said Bruno Billy, president, North America, Apgar Consulting.
Billy follows up by saying that Tibco helps overcome those challenges through data management that enables his team to find new ways to match, merge and analyse data.
Connect, unify & predict is all very well, but (if this technology is as effective as it is promised to be) may we suggest…
… cloud connect, unify for UI usability & click to predict – okay, not snappy enough for a T-shirt, how about: Empowered fabric, wash at high temperature.
Image: TIBCO