News
 Real
Time: Separating Myth from Reality
Real time, as it pertains to data integration and
movement within the enterprise, has become somewhat
vague over the past few years. The conventional
wisdom that has built up around the term over time
is predicated on several myths. Chris McAllister
shares the truth about three real-time myths.
The term real time would likely place in the top 10
list of business buzzwords that is used frequently
today but also among the least well-defined and
understood.
For business executives struggling to make sense of
the hype and the reality of real time, perhaps the
best way to define it is the delivery of information
as it happens, which if you think about it is really
when it matters most.
Myth #1: Real-time is costly
It goes without saying that when a CEO or other
executive with spending authority hears the words
"real time," they immediately think "increased
spending." Yes, most new technology comes with a
price tag, but the widely held myth that real time
requires a rip and replace endeavor - abandoning
legacy infrastructure (and the investments made in
this infrastructure over many years) for costly new
hardware, software and training - is simply not so.
In fact, businesses making a transition to enable
real-time BI may be able to leverage much of what
they already have in place.
With the rapid advances in data integration
technology, new real-time capabilities are more
affordable and can usually be integrated with
existing technologies.
Counterintuitive perhaps, but the methods that
provide the fastest data delivery speeds and highest
volume performance are not always the most
expensive. In fact, in many situations, an
architecture that supports continuous stream updates
with near real-time data feeds has become the
low-cost alternative. In effect, it is now possible
to get the high-volume data acquisition found with
daily batch techniques, and with the speed of
enterprise application integration techniques, at a
fraction of the cost of extraction, transformation
and loading.
This leads to the question: if fresh data can convey
a business benefit, and you have the choice between
real-time continuous data acquisition or updates
once or twice a day - with comparable costs for both
methods - wouldn't it make far more sense to choose
the continuous stream?
Myth #2: Real time is complex and difficult to
maintain.
Real-time capabilities can be a business-changing
enabler, and so many assume that complexity comes
with it. While many organizations immediately
understand the business value, some delay
implementation because they feel that once some
systems operate in real-time, then all the systems
will demand the same level of service for the
business. The IT team fears additional burden and
worries about keeping the system highly available
because the business comes to rely upon it. However,
the same technology that integrates the data can
also be leveraged to keep the system highly
available.
The argument to act now is strong. With recent
technology advances, real-time data can be used
across the organization without the need for batch
outage windows. Because business applications
increasingly serve users on a worldwide basis, new
transactions are continuously being made, and,
therefore, it becomes impractical to impose any
outage or interruption in the overall process. For
critical and revenue-generating data, batch loading
that data nightly or even several times a day is no
longer efficient - data transactions need to be
integrated seconds or minutes later to any target
system that "needs to know." And once a business
moves to real-time operations, it will rarely or
never go back to batch processing.
The last and probably most important point on this
note of complexity is that it's possible to do all
of this with very low overhead and burden on the
source system. Many large organizations have
stringent rules around what touches their most
critical applications, and so it is critical that
there is no intrusiveness on the production system.
Also, real-time continuous data streams eliminate a
middle tier, offering a simpler architecture and
fewer points of failure - not to mention the cost
factor again. Surprisingly, real time is actually
less complex than batch processing approaches and is
also easier to implement, customize and maintain.
Myth #3: Real time isn't for everyone
It is a somewhat dangerous myth that real-time data
is only critical for companies doing business
online. Real-time transactions are everywhere in our
daily lives, even though we might take them for
granted, and most businesses today do have an online
presence, commerce-enabled or not. There is no
business that won't benefit from the value that real
time delivers in data speed, integrity and
availability. By having accurate, up-to-date
information, the customer is not only impressed but
also more efficiently serviced. Today's consumer is
extremely fickle, and the competition is just a
phone call or a click away.
Real-time data not only speeds up business processes
but can change their value altogether. By providing
a real-time view and understanding of events,
customers and information, businesses can make
adjustments and decisions in an instant. With fresh
data available for analysis, any business can
operate to its full potential and impact revenue and
profitability. More and more, the conviction among
consumers is that real time is the speed at which
business is conducted. And business has to keep up.
For all of these reasons, real time is quickly
becoming a standard in many industries. There are
quite a few organizations still contending that real
time isn't right for them, or the time isn't right
for real time, but it's a stance that they will not
be able to maintain for long. The competitive
pressures are simply too great. The comfort of
conventional wisdom will be no refuge when your
primary competition realizes that real time is not
as costly or complicated as imagined, and that it
provides better insight and decision-making across
the organization with a direct impact to the bottom
line. The smarter thinking is that the right time to
design for real time is now.
---Source:
Chris McAllister is the senior director of product
management for GoldenGate Software. He can be
reached at cmcallister@goldengate.com. Copyright
2007 DM Review (www.dmreview.com) and SourceMedia (www.sourcemedia.com).
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