The Five Essential Elements of Self-Service Data Integration

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1 The Five Essential Elements of Self-Service Data Integration INTRODUCTION Firehoses of data are blasting the modern enterprise. From every direction they stream into the data center from warehouses, marketing systems, spreadsheets, social media, and the cloud. Old Data Integration systems are struggling to present information at the speed required for optimal intelligence. To compound matters, business analysts expect more comprehensive data sets that incorporate new and disparate sources. Both of these factors have led to the development of the next-generation of data preparation solutions: self-service Data Integration. Enabled by the latest storage and processing frameworks, self-service Data Integration represents a shift toward instant analysis and real-time navigation for the enterprise.

2 The Five Essential Elements of Self-Service Data Integration W h a t y o u n e e d t o c o n s i d e r a s y o u m o v e t o w a r d s e l f - s e r v i c e a u t o n o m y, a n d h o w o n e s o l u t i o n - U n i f i S o f t w a r e - m a t c h e s u p t o t h e s e n e e d s. 1. COMPREHENSIVE DATA DISCOVERY The spirit of self-service is to put powerful tools in the hands of your most perceptive analysts; allowing them the freedom to identify emerging trends ad hoc. The Unifi platform enables this through a newly developed automated metadata profiling feature that facilitates data discovery. The system also normalizes data attributes and allows them to be linked automatically, greatly reducing manual processing time and enabling easier associations with legacy attribute naming conventions. Another notable benefit of this Unifi metadata management and search function is that information about the data is stored together with the actual data. This puts additional power at the fingertips of business analysts to interpret the data definition more holistically. 2. BIG DATA CAPACITY New distributed storage and processing frameworks like Hadoop are flourishing in the enterprise due to the demand that real-time and streaming data has put on organizations. No longer is it enough to store data in traditional relational databases, due the pure volumes of data that now come from embedded sensors, computer applications, social media activity, and mobile devices. The Unifi Data Integration platform runs natively on Hadoop, leveraging both Hive and Spark resources and unlocking top-end processing horsepower. Unifi gathers, normalizes and integrates data from any source: social, IoT, On-Premise, cloud; wherever data comes from. Unifi provides dozens of native connectors to ensure you can connect and search through hundreds of data sources right at your fingertips. Page 1

3 3. USER MANAGEMENT AND ACCESS CONTROLS The core essence of a successful self-service Data Integration solution is the integrity of the user management function. Historically, access to the integration process has rested with a coterie of embedded IT professionals. Accomplishing the shift from traditional cyclebased Data Integration to the more fluid self-service approach is best facilitated through a robust user management system offering real controls to ease the transition. Unifi supports LDAP and Active Directory to enable secure access. Organizations can set up groups, for example: finance, marketing, manufacturing, data science, and then input users into each group and decide which data sets each group can access. 4. THE EVOLUTION OF DATA GOVERNANCE With greater Data Integration comes greater responsibility. Where in the past an organization may have been pleased to have built data sets and models that could provide straightforward R&D, sales, and customer service guidance, the modern customer profile record with all of its personal identifiable information and deeper reference data demands great respect and uncompromising security. Perhaps the most fundamental question facing a self-service Data Integration implementation is the question of governance. To be considered best-of-breed, any self-service Data Integration solution must provide consideration to the usability, integrity, and security of the data employed in an enterprise. In the end, Unifi opts to entrust that power with the traditional IT professional. With the Unifi platform, IT can shift Data Integration responsibilities to business analysts while maintaining control of the underlying environment, access to data, and visibility of attributes. 5. ONE PLATFORM ONE VENDOR The unique selling proposition of the data warehouse was the ability to offer analysts a single version of the truth. The ultimate presentation layer for all the data assembled. With the realization of modern self-service Data Integration, a similar requirement emerges: One Platform for All Data. Many solutions are moving toward a self-service approach, but do not have the ability to deliver full feature capabilities and might require licensing and maintaining two or more systems. It would be a mistake to begin such a fundamental organizational transformation by introducing more than one solution. Modern data integration is hard enough. Asking business users to learn multiple new tools is a non-starter. With its wide range of data connectors, advanced discovery features, powerful processing capabilities and thoughtful controls Unifi is a solution that can deliver against the One Platform for All Data standard that is increasingly becoming a requirement in the enterprise today. Page 2

4 CASE STUDY COMPASSION-FIRST PET HOSPITALS Data Discovery is Core to the Business Compassion-First Pet Hospitals is a growing network of specialty, emergency and hybrid animal hospitals located throughout the United States that offers a wide range of specialties, including integrative oncology, cardiology and ophthalmology while also investing in novel technologies rarely found in veterinary medicine. Compassion-First s growing base of 30 hospitals receives referrals from 15,000+ veterinary clinics annually. Compassion-First was founded by 40-year industry veteran John Payne. His mission is to create the Mayo clinic of the animal health industry, providing the very best medicine and outcomes to pets and their owners, while also transforming the financial performance of the hospitals enabling a continuous investment in innovation and quality. With each acquisition, Compassion-First inherits a wide variety of information technology systems (practice management, financial, medical records) and data (business/clinical, structured/unstructured). This presents a number of challenges as Compassion-First rapidly moves to integrate the new hospitals while pushing to accelerate the strategic initiatives that are focused on improving evidence-based decision making and crosshospital collaboration. To tackle this problem, Compassion-First turned to Michael Welsh, Vice Chairman of the European Social Entrepreneur Fund and tech industry investor/veteran. What has transpired is a partnership with Compassion- First in the funding and creation of a new insights-as-a service organization called xtendcare that Mr. Welsh has also agreed to guide as Chief Executive. The xtendcare group has been aggressively building a data and decision science capability that leverages a best-of-breed technology stack. During the buildout they paid particular attention to the successful paths already charted by notable world-class human health initiatives such as the big data analytics company Explorys (note: Explorys was a spin out from the Cleveland Clinic and was then acquired by IBM). We have three primary domains where we are developing our data/decision analytics capability and IP: evidence, insights and outcomes, says Mr. Welsh. In the last few months we ve made significant inroads in overcoming the data fragmentation, data quality and silos that have existed in our hospitals. We are now focusing on solutions that extend our reach to more sources of data (evidence), which helps us rapidly deliver insights and transforms the quality and speed of our decision-making. Compassion-First had evaluated a number of data preparation platforms in an attempt to solve their business issues. However, it was clear that a data preparation platform without integrated discovery was never going to meet the requirements of the analysts. To tie this solution all together, Welsh turned to Unifi. To make our data valuable we need to make it frictionless, explains Welsh. This means the metadata describing our data must be rich, clean, and constantly improving to facilitate the discoverability of data and thus its value. Page 3

5 One obvious use case that Welsh highlights is diagnostic tests. When a price change occurs from the supplier or diagnostic lab it may take several weeks or months for all of the hospitals and individual clinics to reflect the impact of that change in all the systems. It s not just about increasing the cost but being able to assess the impact of the cost on client access, profitability, etc. Unlike human healthcare where there is often an insurance policy, animal care is a cash business, explains Welsh. You pay your bill when the services are performed. Not having real-time insight into the effects of COGS on various treatment protocols can have a significant financial impact on a hospitals bottom line, veterinary compensation and most importantly the ability to afford the delivery of the highest quality of medicine. As of now, veterinary hospitals across the industry do not have the capabilities in place that would allow them near real-time visibility and insights so without a doubt profitability is impacted. By deploying Unifi in their enterprise, Compassion-First will be able to deliver roll-based, self-service analytics. Because the data is organized, clean and readily available, hospital executives and staff will be able to derive valuable business and clinical insights more quickly that will facilitate smart evidence based decision making. Even predictive analytics will be more accurate and delivered sooner. For example, accurately forecasting how many veterinarians to schedule in an emergency room based on various external trends and historical patterns gleaned from the medical records. Once all the Unifi d data is available and readily accessible to the hospitals, Welsh can offer the Insights as a Service capability to other organizations in the animal health and life sciences industries. ABOUT SOLUTIONS REVIEW Solutions Review is a collection of enterprise technology news sites creating, curating and aggregating daily content within the top mission-critical solution categories. Over the past four years, the editorial team at Solutions Review has launched over a dozen enterprise technology sites in categories ranging from Data Integration to Business Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Mobility Management and Cloud Platforms. Page 4