Industry Spotlight: Why You Need Hybrid Data Connectivity

SD Times interviewed one of our own, Mike Johnson (Senior R&D Director), to get his opinion on the current state of Big Data, IoT and Hybrid Data Integration.

With the emergence of NoSQL databases, industry insiders predicted that they would take over, gain prominence and replace existing SQL infrastructure. Our 2016 data connectivity survey found that was a prediction which turned out to not be true, and relational databases remain critical to business processes.

Why Hybrid Connectivity Makes Sense

What does this mean for the increasing number of big data sources and the Internet of Things (IoT)? Basically, it means that hybrid connectivity will continue to be an essential part of any successful data strategy. No matter how many times SQL-based and relational databases are predicted to become archaic, they continue to remain popular for a variety of reasons. This means that to get the most out of your data, the old and new must be easily integrated and connected.

One of the biggest voices we hear at Progress is from ISVs who need to provide access to 300-400 data sources for their customers and their solutions. When you have that many sources, it’s typically a mix of cloud, legacy and on-premise data—all of which need to be integrated and all of which are essential for business insights.

Having all of your data accessible, connected and available is the most important part of a data strategy. In fact, access to just 10% more of their data can mean an additional $67.5 million net income for a typical Fortune 1000 company (Forbes).

Making Data Accessible

When many developers get into the world of NoSQL data or SaaS data, they find that those sources of data don’t look and behave in the same way as SQL-based relational databases. We see a transformation from NoSQL to “We’re going to get full SQL support.” Seeing this trend in the industry, it’s about getting back to the confidence in data that relational databases offered.

Our main objective at Progress DataDirect is to make every data source look and feel like a traditional relational database. Our drivers normalize NoSQL data with patent-pending algorithms that apply schema on top of data sets. Any traditional database requires set schema as opposed to sources like MongoDB that do not. This is what some call “the Achilles Heel” of applications written against traditional databases. This is why we do what we do, to overcome this issue and make data easily available from any source anywhere on any application.

What’s Happening Now?

We've gone from 14 data sources 10 years ago to hundreds now. Our connectors will connect you to any data source. Let us know about a currently unsupported data source, and we would be glad to get back to you and assist in any way possible.

For more information on the data community and hybrid connectivity, check out Mike Johnson’s entire interview with SD Times where he goes more in depth with all of these topics along with Hadoop, R&D, data vendors, data science and more.

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