It goes without saying that you have choices when it comes to selecting the right technology to build and manage your data estate.
And when choosing that technology there are many factors that go into your decision making, such as costs, ease-of-use, cloud capability, future needs, and more. We’ve addressed all of these factors at one time or another on this blog, explaining why we believe that TimeXtender’s Discovery Hub®, with its innovative design and advanced functionality, is the clear choice for organizations looking to efficiently build and manage their corporate data estate.
But we’re not the only ones who believe this, as Discovery Hub was recently selected as the “Most Innovative Corporate Data Management Platform in 2019”, as well as a Data Management Solution to Watch in 2019.
So what makes Discovery Hub so innovative? Let’s take a look.
Check out this recent interview with Heine Krog Iverson, Founder & CEO, TimeXtender speaks about Managed Data Documentation. TimeXtender is a company that not only automates data but gives knowledge and great experiences along the way for all employees. It gives you time to clear your mind, take responsibility and letting you be the true superhero that you are.
Build a Modern Data Estate - Distinctive Technology Core
Discovery Hub is built with three main components: the Operational Data Exchange (ODX), the Modern Data Warehouse (MDW), and the Semantic Layer. This layered data architecture is at the heart of what makes Discovery Hub a truly innovative data management platform.
ODX – The ODX acts as a central hub and data repository to manage and store the inflow and outflow of all data. The ODX connects to data from all sources and gathers the data in its raw form without manipulating or cleansing. This allows for connectivity to ever-growing and ever-changing data sources.
MDW – The MDW can be built by modeling data residing in the ODX, along with data from other tables used at the local, self-service level to create golden records. In the MDW, data is improved, enriched and consolidated to provide data quality one time. This optimizes data for core analytics. The MDW also preserves historical data as data and source systems change with time.
Semantic Layer – Semantic layer modeling provides easy access and control to data that is relevant to a specific department or purpose. It transforms data so that business users can easily understand and properly interpret the data. Governed models are defined once and then automatically used to deliver data in the right form and context to any data visualization tool, including Power BI, Tableau or Qlik.
Designed for Time Efficiency -- Translates to Cost Savings
While other approaches require time to manually stitch together a mix of tools and vendors for data integration, data preparation, blending and documentation, Discovery Hub is a single, integrated and agile platform that leverages the power of automation to save substantial time and money. Following is an explanation how.
Powerful automation - It provides a faster, easier and more accurate means to access, model and govern your data. Discovery Hub provides this by automatically generating code and documentation and through an execution engine that improves its own performance.
Meta-driven approach -It operates at a metadata level to provide access and scalability for your data without an additional IT burden thereby speeding up accessibility.
Full control –It saves time by turning complex data into valuable information without manual coding.
Accelerated time to data –You get results from data 10 times faster than traditional methods, with a 70% reduction in build costs and up to 80% reduction in maintenance costs.
Aggregation - Easily search for, gather and present data from diverse systems and platforms.
Fully integrated – It caters to the whole value chain in the information process – from connecting to the data silos to transforming the data into semantic business models that can be easily and quickly accessed by BI tools.
Built with Regulatory Compliance in Mind
Businesses that reside in countries with GDPR and that store and manage data, must comply with the regulation. Privacy is also enforced in many countries around the world. Discovery Hub is designed to support these requirements, along with HIPAA and Sarbanes Oxley, by using the following functionality:
Auto-generated documentation – Because Discovery Hub auto-generates documentation for all three layers of the data architecture, you always have up-to-date documentation for your analytics data.
Traceability – Auto-generated data lineage and impact analysis allow you to see the source of the data point and effects that any change will have.
Security - Quickly and easily anonymize any personally identifiable data, while still using it to provide actionable insights for your business. Maintain, manage and document access rights.
Ready for the Future - Runs Optimally on Microsoft Azure
![Odx Odx](/uploads/1/2/4/7/124706410/516798360.png)
![Odx Odx](/uploads/1/2/4/7/124706410/523621317.png)
Discovery Hub is Microsoft Azure certified and runs seamlessly, with ease on Azure. With Microsoft Azure being the best cloud platform to run Windows, SQL Server and other Microsoft data platforms, and with all the benefits for moving applications and data to the cloud such as cost reduction, freeing up IT resources, and reducing infrastructure and maintenance requirements, this capability should not be taken lightly.
Running both Discovery Hub and your data platform on Azure provides optimal cost efficiency and performance for building and maintaining a modern data estate on Microsoft technologies. Building a modern data estate using Discovery Hub and Azure SQL Database Managed Instance gives you a solid foundation for any use case and data scenario from core analytics to deep learning and beyond. And for organizations choosing not to operate in the cloud, Discovery Hub also runs on-premises and hybrid.
That’s just an overview of the innovation designed in Discovery Hub. To find out more about what makes Discovery Hub a truly innovative data management platform visit here to see a list of key features or here to find out what analysts have said about the technology.
Many companies have turned to a low-cost, high-capacity Hadoop-based data lake. However, a data lake without a data stream can quickly become a pool of stagnant data, and maintaining a constant flow in and out of the data lake requires a diverse set of very expensive skills. The newest release of Discovery Hub® enables users to fully automate this process so that a continuous flow of data can occur in and out of an Azure Data Lake.
AARHUS, Denmark & BELLEVUE, Wash. – 26 September 2018 — In today’s business world, data is being generated at an ever-increasing rate. Some tech analysts have estimated that the amount of data doubles every two years.
In an effort to solve the challenge that organizations face of how to manage all their growing data, many have turned to a low-cost, high-capacity Hadoop-based data lake. However, a data lake without a data stream can quickly become a pool of stagnant data, and maintaining a constant flow in and out of the data lake requires a diverse set of very expensive skills.
To address this challenge, TimeXtender, a recognized global software company enabling instant access to any type of data in the organization to support advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), has announced it has developed a new ODX (Operational Data Exchange) and is releasing an upgraded version today of its Discovery Hub®, of which the ODX is a central component.
Discovery Hub®, with its new ODX, enables users to fully automate this process so that a continuous flow of data can occur in and out of an Azure Data Lake. This function permits organizations to populate the Azure Data Lake with virtually any number and any type of data sources available on the market.
This also allows users to choose Azure Data Lake and all variants of Microsoft SQL server (Azure SQL Database Managed Instance, SQL Database, et al.) as the storage. And, as Microsoft releases new storage options, Discovery Hub® will support those as well.
With this new Discovery Hub® announcement, data will be available in the same structure and quality as in the source system, but will now be accessible from one location. This takes out the pain of data preparation while also avoiding performance and security issues on source systems. In addition, companies will have the capability to connect AI, predictive or self-service analytics tools; enabling IT to use Discovery Hub® as a single platform for offloading all their data for business users to access and leverage.
The new ODX is built for simplicity and automation, as evidenced by the setup that takes as little as two minutes to complete. This is achieved due to TimeXtender’s proprietary automation engine doing the bulk of the work.
The consolidated data from a company’s data sources will be available from one place in raw data format. Users can choose to connect any analytics tool to the ODX to analyze the raw data, such as AI or predictive for data scientists, or they can choose to further build out their data estate/analytics platform. Because Discovery Hub® automatically tracks all metadata, users will be able to easily retrieve the desired data out of the Azure Data Lake and deliver it into a structured format (Modern Data Warehouse, Shared Semantic Layer). This allows for easy connection to any analytics tool for any department needing more structured and refined data.
The new release entirely supports the current version of Azure SQL Database Managed Instance that represents fully managed SQL Server Instance hosted in Azure cloud — allowing customers to easily take advantage of new technology when released by Microsoft.
“By providing support for Azure Data Lake, TimeXtender’s Discovery Hub® essentially delivers companies, their business users, data scientists, and IT personnel, with a powerful ‘one-stop shop’ for all its data,” said Heine Krog Iversen, co-founder and CEO of TimeXtender. “This capability is vital as companies often struggle to manage all their existing and future data. With Discovery Hub®, organizations can effortlessly manage all their data in one central location, allowing them to more easily capitalize on all its inherent knowledge.”
This new release also includes enhancements of the endpoints in the shared semantic layer, making it even easier (and faster) to use the same governed data models enterprise-wide regardless if users choose to work with Power BI, Qlik or Tableau.