Get to Know Unisys Data Exchange
Data. It’s everywhere and growing at an astonishing rate.
Not only are we producing, sharing, and storing more data than we ever have before, we’re also using it to fuel an unprecedented number of business transactions – transactions that are executed by a diverse mix of clients, partners, and suppliers, from multiple locations, on a variety of devices.
And moreover, this data no longer lives in a vacuum. What’s created by one business process is now shared with others, further increasing the complexities of data management.
Fortunately, we recently released a product that’s designed to help you address many of these issues.
Unisys Data Exchange is a new data integration solution for ClearPath® MCP and OS 2200 environments built to enable selective and near-real-time data replication and transformation from a source data store to one or more target data stores. It can propagate a selected set of data from one data store to another, and while doing so, apply transformations to the data as dictated by the business processes and applications that support it.
With the help of these capabilities, Data Exchange makes it possible for you to effectively address the following critical needs:
- Facilitating timely access to data for business process integration
- Acquiring the data needed to power reporting, business intelligence, or big data analytics
Let’s take a look at how Data Exchange makes these goals a reality.
Using Data Exchange to…Support Business Process Integration
Say you recently launched a new initiative that hinges upon two unique business processes becoming tightly integrated. However, doing so means you must first find a way to enable the near-real-time integration of operational data between two applications, both of which run on different operating systems and access heterogeneous data stores.
Data Exchange makes this integration simple by enabling you to work with existing applications and data, so you can minimize – or completely avoid – the costs associated with modifying the application and database schema. In addition, it also monitors the source data store for changes, allowing them to be propagated to the target data store as they occur.
Using Data Exchange to…Support Reporting, Business Intelligence, and Analytics
Imagine you’re under pressure from business leaders to transform the mountains of data your organization collects every day into actionable insights. However, at the same time, you must also comply with demands from IT to offload reporting, business intelligence, or big data activities from production systems and data stores.
Data Exchange simplifies decision support by allowing you to copy only the data that is needed for a specific activity. This way, you can provide executives with the information they need to build a new business strategy without impacting the end users who rely on your production applications day in, day out.
Making Data Work for You
As these examples illustrate, Data Exchange can make a significant, positive impact on the way you manage and integrate data. Specifically, it can help you:
- Increase the efficiency of business operations: By automatically capturing updates to source data stores as they occur, and replacing batch data transfers that use FTP and similar technologies, Data Exchange enables you to provide better client service, effectively integrate and automate business processes, and accelerate decision making.
- Reduce software development and maintenance costs: Data Exchange can help you avoid the costs associated with developing, testing, and supporting your own data integration and transformation tools – as well as those related to changing existing application source code and database schemas.
- Minimize overhead: The ability to share a subset of the source data with the target data store helps you reduce costs while making it easier to support changing business objectives.
- Increase IT flexibility: Because it supports and enables the integration of heterogeneous data sources running on heterogeneous operating systems, Data Exchange helps IT innovate with greater ease and efficiency.
Data Exchange is an optional, separately priced, software-only product available for all fabric-enabled ClearPath Libra and Dorado systems. A Data Exchange development/test license is also included in the new ClearPath MCP Developer Studio product. To learn more about Data Exchange, check out the tutorial video on YouTube. Please contact your Unisys sales representative for pricing and configuration information.