What is big data integration and how to choose tools for it

Forrester: big Data technologies are spreading

Analysts from research company Forrester indicates that now the Big Data technology spread explosively. Experts also predict that the share of NoSQL and Hadoop technologies in the market will grow significantly in the next 5 years. At the same time, the market for the first will increase by 25% per year, and for the second – by 32.9%. The entire big Data market will grow three times faster than the market of all technologies.

In addition, Forrester proposes to divide all Big Data technologies into 6 important parts: corporate storage, NoSQL, Hadoop, big data integration, data virtualization and in-memory data factory (in-memory is a technology that allows you to perform all the calculations in RAM).

What is big data integration?

Big Data Integration is any technology for moving data from Big Data systems, including NoSQL storage systems and Hadoop. And also – to constantly update data as they change in these storage systems.

What influences the development of big data integration technologies?

• There are new storage systems that support Big Data systems. Is there a new system? Together with her there was a need to extract data from it. And also – when the data in it changes, distribute information about it through other systems.
• The role of data security has increased, including data encryption and on-the-fly encryption when querying it.
• Companies began to pay more attention to the performance of the big data integration system, including almost real-time data provision. Productivity plays a critical role in effectively supporting business processes.
• There are many new technologies that are associated with Big Data. Among these technologies are Internet of things and machine learning.
• Increased data value in most organizations. This is especially true of companies whose annual profits total more than a billion dollars.

How to choose a big data integration tool?

Taking all the listed trends into account, the integration of big data is not as simple as it might seem at first glance. When choosing tools, you should focus primarily on the following requirements: performance, suitability for solving your specific task and for Data Governance.

Suitability for problem solving and for Data Governance

To make no mistake, you need to understand how you need to transfer data to and from Big Data systems. In addition, you need to determine what operations you will conduct with the data. For example, is it necessary to somehow transform the scheme, the data structure. In some cases, you may have to remove it completely or add it on the contrary. Keep in mind that Big Data systems deal with structured and unstructured data. And you need to manage both types equally effectively.

Productivity

The performance of big data integration tools is very important. The speed at which data is transferred has its own requirements. Information must arrive in time to the target business user or to the target system so that the tools for analytics can absorb it.

Poor performance of a big data integration solution is common. To solve this problem without significant changes is often very difficult. Therefore, take this aspect into account in advance.