Connections
Partner Connection
Dynamic duo
Informatica and Teradata offer seamlessly integrated data in dual active environments.
by Lori Janies
A large railroad company must deal with a dizzying array of information needs every day. For example, when a cargo ship carrying goods destined for rail pulls into port, the railroad company must answer a multitude of questions, such as: Are there enough workers and vehicles available to operate the trains and deliver the cargo? What service level agreements are in place? Does the shipment contain any hazardous materials that require special handling or route planning?
On a broader, strategic level, railroad executives need information to answer questions such as: Should we try to renegotiate our labor contracts? Do we need to lay more track, hire more employees, or buy more locomotives or railcars?
In the past, the company had to overcome multiple roadblocks to answer these questions, relying on error-prone custom scripts to extract information from its operational systems. These scripts were manually reviewed and overhauled with every minor system change.
Additionally, queries that were run simultaneously severely slowed system performance. Data integration and analysis had to be scheduled, creating data latency problems and limiting the company’s ability to quickly make accurate operational decisions.
Finally, error-prone processes often marred the accuracy of the answers. The company needed a reliable method for moving data, tools for ensuring high data quality, and a highly available resilient data warehousing architecture to support its mission-critical business processes.
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Accessible and available
Now, a partnership between data integration leader Informatica and enterprise data ware-house leader Teradata enables organizations like this railroad company to leverage a declarative data integration platform to simultaneously load data into a Teradata multi-system environment—in this case, in a dual active configuration to deliver high availability and maximum processing throughput.
With a dual load/dual active implementation, organizations can ensure that accurate data is accessible to all users at the highest levels of availability—higher than can be achieved by any single data warehouse system.
The Informatica/Teradata joint solution for dual active data warehousing enables the rail company’s logistics experts to automatically track any relevant data element in near real time, ensuring that it meets its requirements for delivering cargo. The dual active environment can handle complex queries and process huge volumes of aggregated data, giving executives access to the fast, accurate answers needed to make successful strategic decisions.
Informatica’s data quality products are also integrated with Teradata’s master data management (MDM) solution to ensure that the data in each dual active data warehousing system is accurate, integrated and in line with all relevant data governance rules and processes.
Because of the solution’s ability to simultaneously load data, users can trust the accuracy of the data in both systems, knowing that it has been standardized, matched and enhanced. That means any query asked of either system will yield the same answer.
Separate from the dual active solution, Informatica provides a customized, easy-to-use dashboard that enables users to see a graphical representation of important information such as where data is coming from, where it is going, what transformations have occurred and who is responsible for implementing business rules. This data lineage transparency gives end users the confidence to trust their reports and act boldly based on accurate information.
Solution benefits
The Informatica/Teradata joint solution offers multiple benefits to a range of industries including finance, retail, insurance, gaming, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, aviation and government. Companies can:
- Reduce the maintenance time required for performing integration tasks
- Increase data tracking transparency
- Easily balance workloads across two systems to ensure accurate and timely information with highest performance
- Help ensure data quality and governance adherence through robust MDM processes
- Improve decision-making capabilities with better, more timely data
The dual solution not only empowers companies to easily analyze and solve business issues but also grants executives access to the data they need to improve operational efficiency, meet strategic goals and plan successfully for the future.
Lori Janies writes about business and technology for various publications.