White Paper
Ten Things You Need to Know About Data
Virtualization
What is Data Virtualization?
Data virtualization is an agile data integration method that simplifies
information access. Data virtualization’s simplified approach empowers
businesses to gain more insight from their data, respond faster to ever
changing analytics and BI needs and save 50-75% over data replication and
consolidation.
© 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public.
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Why Use Data Virtualization?
With so much data today, the difference between business leaders and alsorans is often how they use their data to achieve better outcomes and beat
their competition. Businesses that successfully use their data will be leaders;
those that do not will fall behind.
Data virtualization provides instant access to all the data you want, the way
you want it.
Enterprise, cloud, big data, and more, no problem!
The proliferation of traditional and new data sources and the movement of
data to the cloud are the primary drivers for an agile business solution that
provides a real-time, consolidated logical view of all the data.
What Are The Benefits of Data Virtualization?
With Cisco data virtualization, you benefit in several important ways.

Better Business Decisions – Gain more business insights by
using all your data. Business self-service empowers your people
with instant access to all the data they want, the way they want it.

Greater Agility – Respond more quickly to your ever-changing
analytics and business intelligence data requirements. Data
virtualization can provide 5 to 10 times faster time to solution than
traditional data integration.

Reduced Costs – Save 50 to 70 percent by eliminating data
replication. Through data consolidation, Data Virtualization allows
you to increase utilization of existing server and storage
investments. Data Virtualization’s simplified approach reduces
complexity and saves money.

Improved IT Effectiveness – The Cisco Data Virtualization Suite
has automation tools and an easy-to-use interface and so your IT
staff can increase its productivity and efficiency and develop and
manage customized business views of data. Business Directory
enables users and IT to better collaborate in the data development
process so that IT can respond faster to business needs.
© 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public.
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How Does Data Virtualization Work?
Data virtualization’s business views provide instant access to the data your
business users require, while shielding them from IT complexity.

Install - Start quickly and scale successfully with an easy-to-adopt
overlay to existing infrastructure.

Develop – Your IT staff uses data virtualization’s rich data analysis,
design and development tools to build the business views (also
known as data services). Business users can easily access the
business views through a user friendly directory of business data.

Run – When your business users run a report or refresh a
dashboard, data virtualization’s high- performance query engine
accesses the data sources and delivers the exact information
requested.

Manage – Data virtualization’s management, monitoring, security
and governance functions ensure security, reliability and scalability.
Automation tools simplify migration and promotion of configurations
and settings across large data virtualization environments and
minimize deployment risks.
The Cisco Data Virtualization Platform provides all these capabilities in a
complete and agile solution with options that include:

Business Directory – Business users use this self-service webbased tool to easily find and use all available business data.
© 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public.
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
Active Cluster – Substantially scale your deployments and
maintain continuous availability of your data services.

Adapters – Simplify and accelerate high-performance access to a
wide range of data sources including popular enterprise
applications, relational and multi-dimensional data sources, i.e. “big
data” stores.

Deployment Manager – Automate the migration of artifacts,
configurations, and settings from one CIS instance to another in a
large-scale deployment while minimizing deployment risks.
When To Use Data Virtualization?
You can use data virtualization to enable a wide range of applications.

Agile BI and Analytics – Improve your insight faster.

Data Warehouse Extension – Increase your return on data
warehouse investments.

Data Virtualization Architecture – Gain information agility and
reduce costs.

Data Integration – Integrate your Big Data, Cloud, SAP, Oracle
Applications and other sources more easily.
© 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public.
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
Logical Data Warehouse – Modernize your information
management architecture and simplify real-time data access.

Business and Industry Solutions – Support your unique business
needs.
When Not To Use Data Virtualization?
Data virtualization is not the answer to every data integration problem.
Sometimes data consolidation in a warehouse or mart, along with ETL or
ELT is a better solution for a particular use case. And sometimes a hybrid
mix is the right answer.
You can use Cisco’ Data Integration Strategy Decision Tool to help you
decide when to use data virtualization, data consolidation or perhaps a
hybrid combination.
What is the Business Case for Data Virtualization?
Data virtualization has a compelling business case. The following drivers
make data virtualization a “must have” for any large organization today.

Profit Growth – Data virtualization delivers the information your
business requires to increase revenue and reduce costs.

Risk Reduction – Data virtualization’s up-to-the-minute business
insights help you manage business risks and reduce compliance
penalties. Plus, data virtualization's agility enables rapid
development and quick iterations to lower your IT project risks.

Technology Optimization – Data virtualization improves utilization
of existing server and storage investments. And with less storage
required, hardware and governance savings are substantial.

Staff Productivity – Data virtualization's easy-to-use, highproductivity design and development environments improve your IT
staff effectiveness and efficiency. Cisco Data Virtualization’s
Business Directory provides business users a self-service webbased directory to easily find and use all available business data.

Agility – Your data virtualization projects are completed faster so
business benefits are derived sooner. Lower project costs are an
additional agility benefit.
© 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public.
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How to Deploy Data Virtualization?
Data virtualization installs quickly with an easy-to-adopt overlay to existing
infrastructure.
You can start your data virtualization adoption with specific projects that
address immediate information needs.
You can also deploy data virtualization in a more enterprise-wide manner,
with common semantics, shared objects and architecture, and an Integration
Competency Center.
To learn more about successful data virtualization deployments, Data
Virtualization: Going Beyond Traditional Data Integration to Achieve Business
Agility, a collaborative effort with our customers includes deployment case
studies from ten enterprises.
© 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public.
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Why Select Cisco Data Virtualization?
Cisco acquired data virtualization market leader Composite Software in July
2013.
Our data virtualization products – with 350 man-years of R&D, six million lines
of code and millions of hours of operational deployment – are the most
proven offering in the market.
Selected by nearly two hundred of world’s largest organizations, our data
virtualization thought leadership assets demonstrate the expertise we can
bring to bear for our customers. These include:

Industry’s first business self-service solution

The first book on data virtualization

Data virtualization’s foremost microsite, the DV Café

The Data Virtualization Leadership Series of analyst reports on data
virtualization

Data virtualization’s only dedicated blog, the Data Virtualization
Leadership Blog

The Data Virtualization Channel on YouTube with users, analysts, chalk
talks and more

The Data Virtualization Leadership Awards honoring users

Data Virtualization Day Resources, assets from the premier events in
data virtualization

Data virtualization’s longest running newsletter, Enterprise Information
Insight
© 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public.
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