Accelerate analytics and AI with data fabric technology

[JoannStarke]

Learn how HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric accelerates the business value of your data with a unified data layer that spans multiple locations and data types without moving or copying data sets.

Unless your business is a rare unicorn, extracting insights from your data to advance business value has become a key initiative. During HPE Discover last month, I spoke with hundreds of companies that wanted to use analytics and AI to achieve this goal — and they were all struggling.

It's no secret that enterprises have moved to hybrid and multicloud architectures to try to mitigate the financial uncertainty of public clouds and data gravity issues of on-premises applications. These architectures enable flexibility to place data and workloads where the company experiences the greatest performance and cost efficiency. But the downside to these architectures is the isolated nature of their data in what is commonly known as "data silos."

When it comes to analytics and AI, data silos slow down time to insights. They take developers, data analysts and engineers on a laborious journey that includes gaining access rights to each silo, discovering what data is available, copying appropriate data sets, then normalizing the data to remove duplicates. It’s estimated that this process can take weeks to months.[1]

A new report from S&P Global (formerly 451 Research) states that driving meaningful insights with analytics and AI requires a more unified data approach. Data fabrics, meshes, and hubs all claim to unify data, but it is data fabric technology that has being adopted at a rapid pace. That’s because the primary objective of a data fabric is "to consistently deliver high-integrity insights to data-dependent individuals across any enterprise." [2]

Data fabrics accelerate value in hybrid environments

Accelerate analytic insights by unifying different data types with HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric Software. This solution federates files, objects, tables, and streams into a unified data plane that spans across all geographies and architectures reducing the need to copy and move data before processing. It allows organizations to continue placing data and workloads in the most cost efficient locations while reducing the laborious process of negotiating access rights, data discovery, and copying. Designed to be target agnostic, this solution can be installed in existing data centers, colocation environments, on any metal in the public cloud, and as a small form factor at the edge. Figure 1. By traversing multiple locations, the data plane delivers unified visibility, access, and management through a single user interface.

Who needs data fabric technology?

Company size does not determine if data fabric technology is a fit for your organization. A solid understanding of the hurdles standing between your data and insights is what matters. Answering yes to some key questions is a good way to determine if data fabric technology is right for your business.  For example:

• Is data created across multiple formats and types (files, objects, tables, streams)?
• Is data duplicated across multiple sites increasing costs and time to remove redundancies?
• Do diverse stakeholders across the organization need direct access to hybrid data to complete everyday tasks?
• Do existing analytic architectures, i.e., data lakes/warehouses, need to be integrated with more modern analytic approaches?

HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric is unique because it abstracts the data from the storage protocol making it simple to federate different data types into the same data plane. Support for the most popular analytic protocols allows data to be stored in its native format while users and applications access it using a different protocol. A single data version accessible by multiple users and applications means that you can reduce software and infrastructure licenses associated with multiple analytic point solutions to manage and secure each data silo.

How is this possible?

In today’s enterprises, data teams need to utilize multiple namespaces. But HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric replaces this with a single namespace that provides a consistent access point for users and applications to all fabrics and their linked data files, volumes, buckets, and topics. 

Figure 2. The global namespace (far left) provides a consistent access point for users and applications to data fabrics and associated volumes, buckets, and topics.

The global namespace makes it possible for users to see all the data managed by HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric Software then access it from any location. This substantially increases productivity for developers and data science teams by reducing the latency associated with unifying isolated data sources manually.

But this solution does more than just unify data. Built-in security, data management, and governance systems work in tandem with the global namespace to consistently apply policies across hybrid environments reducing the risk of error and exposure to risk. Point-and-click management allows authorized users to create fabrics, volumes, buckets, and topics through menus while background processes transparently set up, configure, and attach the component to the respective data fabric and global namespace without IT intervention.

Data is the core asset for every data-driven enterprise, but complexity and siloed data is stalling analytic initiatives. HPE Ezmeral Data Fabric helps to solve these challenges with a hybrid data plane, global namespace, built-in security and simplified data management allowing data teams to focus on the insights your business needs instead of managing infrastructure.

This white paper will take you deeper or get started today with a free instance.

Joann Starke
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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[1] HPE Ezmeral Software: Simplified data management for analytic workloads, ESG, May 2023

[2] Data Fabrics accelerate value in a hybrid architectural approach, S&P Global, May 2023