When Data Virtualization Makes the Difference
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In a previous post, I talked about some key data virtualization concepts and the types of professionals who can benefit the most from it.

Data virtualization is not only beneficial in certain specific areas, but it can really make a difference in any situation in which a lot of data is present on different sources, or when a single data source is very complex, and it must first be integrated and analyzed before it can enable business stakeholders to make decisions.

In this post, I will provide a few examples of the benefits that data virtualization brings to three specific industries: The financial industry, telecommunications, and retail.

Data Virtualization in the Financial Industry

With data virtualization, banks can provide different data to a variety of different departments within the organization, while maintaining a clear understanding of which data is the certified data (a fundamental element for the banking sector) thanks to the functionality of being able to easily track the data lineage with data virtualization. Each functional area needs different information; marketing managers need very different data than the data used by counter staff.

In situations like this, replicating the data to meet the needs of different sectors would increase not only the costs of the infrastructure but also the complexity of the implementation as well as the maintenance. With data virtualization, banks can easily create views that integrate all of the necessary data for serving queries, whose results quickly appear in the final applications.

The Denodo Platform has its own data lineage functionality, which outlines the entire path of the data, from its origin through all of the transformations it undergoes, right up to the views in which the is consumed, and this lineage also provides stakeholders with an idea of the impact that a data change would have on the global process.

The Denodo Platform can also be easily integrated with leading master data management (MDM) products, so it can import the structure of tables and the relationships that bind them without having to recreate it from scratch. This enables banks to keep the data certified.

Data Virtualization in Telecommunications

Telecommunications companies are under pressure to reduce churn, as they compete in an increasingly crowded market. The risk of customers switching to providers with better terms or more network coverage is very high. To retain subscribers, telecommunications companies must:

👉🏻 Provide increasingly customized services

👉🏻 Make the structure of their business models more flexible

👉🏻 Continuously improve the network

With Data Virtualization, telecom companies can:

👍🏻 Improve customer care and customer services by accessing real-time data

👍🏻 Bring greater agility to business services; with data virtualization, updates happen seamlessly

A data virtualization layer facilitates maintenance, such as the updating and replacement of key databases in operations support systems. In addition, with real-time data, equipment can be proactively replaced, and support can be provided, in a timely manner. Finally, data virtualization streamlines the resolution of network-related customer calls.

DV in Retail

Retail companies need to plan for expected production in advance, they need to be able to see sales trends in relation to the inventory for each product, and they need to optimize logistics or define orders in relation to store locations. Data virtualization makes it possible to respond to these business needs as well, integrating information that comes from different data sources and displaying all of the results in a single view that can be displayed in any data visualization tool.

DV Across the Industries

These are just a few examples of how data virtualization can be applied, but data virtualization is extremely flexible, and can bring benefits to any industry with data integration and data management challenges.