Forget data warehousing, it’s ‘data lakes’ now

• Data Lakes becoming corporate priority because they fill a critical gap
• Federation Business Data Lake simplifies complex task of building a data lake: EMC

EMC Corp has announced the Federation Business Data Lake, a fully engineered solution that includes leading storage and big data analytics technologies from EMC Information Infrastructure, Pivotal, and VMware.
 
The Data Lake will help customers leverage big data, thereby clearing the path for new insights and disruptive differentiation, EMC said in a statement.
 
Implemented in as little as seven days, the Federation Business Data Lake greatly simplifies the massively complex task of building a data lake and is designed for speed, self-service and scalability for the enterprise.
 
This would enable organisations to begin making better-informed business decisions using big data analytics, the company claimed.
 
The Federation Business Data Lake joins the Enterprise Hybrid Cloud Solution as a converged solution from the EMC Federation that will redefine infrastructure to maximise the speed and agility for IT organisations deploying hybrid clouds and data lakes, it added.
 
The incredible potential of big data is being driven first and foremost by the growth of data from traditional applications, modern applications, sensors and intelligent devices, along with masses of new public data such as social media feeds.
 
The ability to capture and process that data is now possible because of the growth of inexpensive storage and limitless compute, along with the invention of new technologies that enable real-time analysis and a direct connection to action through new applications and products.
 
These storage and analytics technologies, along with the massive data sets, comprise the Business Data Lake.
 
Business Data Lakes are becoming a top corporate priority because they fill a critical gap left by traditional data warehousing, EMC argued.
 
A Business Data Lake contains structured and unstructured data from a wide variety of sources and the analytics are focused on building models to predict the future.
 
Companies with successful Data Lakes are leveraging the data and predictive models to build new products, applications and business models to redefine their industry, taking or extending the market leader role, EMC said.
 
“As the number of connected devices continues to soar, the world of digital business is disrupting traditional business models,” said Jeffrey Kelly, principal analyst of big data at analyst firm Wikibon.
 
“It’s no longer just about the product itself, but the data and the application of the data.
 
“With Big Data, organisations can gather as much data as possible and apply analytic techniques to understand the data, make predictions and take action, resulting in the creation of new business models.
 
“Big Data solutions like the Federation Business Data Lake allow organisations to bring data, analytics and applications together to realise new business opportunities,” he added.
 
‘Building’ a data lake
 
A highly effective Business Data Lake will provide three critical functions, said EMC:
 

• Store: Stores structured and unstructured data for all types of analytics, from many different sources, blending capacity and performance as needed for the analytics use case.

• Analyse: Provides modern data management and analytics tools for all types of analytics including Hadoop-based, In-Memory No-SQL and Scale-out MPP.

• Surface and Act: Provides data to users and applications to enable real-time changes in outcomes and to influence critical decisions.

Until now, building an effective Data Lake has been difficult and complex. IT organisations seeking to deploy a Data Lake must deploy and configure the right analytics platform and the right corresponding storage for each analytics use case, from Hadoop to real-time.
 
Once the environment is created, data must be loaded with all the right access rights and governance applied to the data sets.
 
Deployment of the environment and data sets is a complex and time-consuming task, preventing IT from meeting the needs of business users, EMC argued.
 
The Federation Business Data Lake Solution however, makes it easy to deploy a Business Data Lake, EMC claimed.
 
Core products from the EMC Federation of Companies, EMC Information Infrastructure, Pivotal and VMware, provide the core functionality of the Federation Business Data Lake meeting the critical functional needs – Store, Analyse, Surface and Act.
 
“Nearly every traditional business model faces near-term, lasting disruption. The fast track to competitive advantage will be reserved for those able to quickly embrace and yield value from the massive growth in data, but it will take a new approach,” said Josh Kahn, senior vice president of Global Solutions at EMC.
 
“The new Federation Business Data Lake solution makes it easy to harness all types of data to build predictive models that enable new applications, products and business models to redefine industries,” he declared.
 
The Federation Business Data Lake will be offered in directed availability in April 2015, with general availability in select countries.
 
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