If you found this article by typing “what is data fabric” into Google, chances are you want to learn more about how this innovative integration method can help you or your business. In organizations that handle large datasets to perform analytics and similar tasks, issues can usually arise when integrating their data with other systems. These integrations can be migrations, company merges, or upgrades to their legacy systems.
Such integrations can require a company to pay high costs to transform the data into another format or to copy them into another storage unit. Data fabric technique works with fabric computations that can help businesses structure their data in a way that presents autonomy, plasticity, and metadata-driven experiences. This can be made possible through an infrastructure concept called fabric computing.
What is fabric computing?
Fabric computing is an infrastructure that was designed in a way so a pool of different computing sources can be connected to represent a single computing infrastructure. This type of system can help businesses upscale their services, adhere to parallel processing services, and easily reconfigure their computing capabilities. The term fabric is used in this type of computing as it represents the interwoven and cohesive operations between components like processors, storage, and memory in the infrastructure.
What are some features of fabric computing?
Fabric computing, also known as unified computing, consists of nodes that are interconnected to create a high-performing computer system. These computer systems include storage, networking, management, and parallel processing functions that are interlinked through high bandwidth. Fabric computing uses concurrent processing as well as coupled address spaces to solve massive computer problems like those of cloud computing services.
These systems are best used when developing use cases for proof of concept to choose apps for testing. Additionally, it can help businesses deal with multiple vendors, cross-functional teams, and establish a roadmap for the entirety of projects. Fabric computing can additionally help form an organizational culture within the company and help workers learn about their vendors’ automated tools.
What are some challenges to using fabric computing?
Some organizations may find that fabric computing presents an issue to their systems. One of the challenges they may face while using a fabric computing system is the lack of data history. The business would have to create a business application to properly track any changes to the data. This can be a big issue when dealing with data such as finances or anything that requires a transaction history.
Moreover, another challenge companies may see is the limitation to their vendor choices and how they can be locked onto that vendor for years to come. These systems are also not as flexible for personalization, which can be a disadvantage for many organizations. It can also reduce the job openings for database administrators within the company as only one would be enough to cover all the bases.
How can fabric computing help your organization?
Despite having challenges, the fabric computing system can help organizations deploy their integrated components in a much faster way and the capacity of the system can be increased significantly. Additionally, it creates a unified data environment as well as improves the stability and reliability of their services. Fabric computing can help mitigate risks as well as reduce data management and service costs, and can even support multiple locations for data storage. Thanks to its interwoven architecture, data fabric can easily help organizations scale their businesses with a centralized data flow coordination.
Depending on your type of business, how many vendors you have, and the size of the organization itself, you could opt for a fabric computer system if your goal is to continue growing your enterprise.
