At UCB, a biopharma company based in Belgium, our core purpose is to improve the lives of people with severe diseases in the focus areas of immunology and neurology. Data is critical to this core purpose, as it guides important decisions.
The Classical Approach
Before implementing a Data Virtualization solution via the Denodo Platform provided by Denodo, we used a classical extract, transform, and load (ETL) approach to integrate data. But because this required the maintenance and coordination of many ETL data flows, this approach required a prohibitive amount of development time. In addition, our data scientists and other analysts could not always gain immediate access to all data sets; some requests required ad-hoc integrations, and some depended on scheduled deliveries that did not always meet the needs of every stakeholder.
These challenges were made more complex due to the large number of different data sources that we need to support, which include amongst others a CRM system, on-premises solutions like our existing data warehouses, Google Analytics, and other cloud-based sources.
A Streamlined Approach
The Denodo Platform virtualizes the data instead of replicating it, and rather than addressing each individual integration, the Denodo Platform is implemented as an enterprise data access layer. As such, the Denodo Platform functions as a logical data warehouse layer. Because of this architecture and approach, the Denodo Platform reduced our development time by at least half. Also, the Denodo Platform provided easier access to the data in our many diverse data sources.
Our Core Purpose
Data Virtualization has supported our core purpose in numerous ways. To pick a few, it is helping us to better position our products, it is enabling us to gain better control over our documents lifecycle, and it is providing us with the foundation to build highly responsive digital products.
I recently spoke with Denodo about our use of Data Virtualization, and you can see the video here:
To learn more about how companies are leveraging data virtualization across numerous industries, see the collection of Denodo case studies.
- Leveraging the Denodo Platform to Strengthen our Core Purpose - March 26, 2020