The “ABCs” of DaaS
Enabling Data as a Service for Application
Delivery, Business Intelligence, and
Compliance Reporting
The ABCs of DaaS – Enabling Data as a Service Application Delivery, Business Intelligence, and Compliance Reporting
Revision: 5 June 2012
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The “ABCs” of Data as a Service
Data growth continues to outpace business growth at many organizations. Modern business creates more data, stored in more databases and demanded by more users, every year. Moreover, the growth in data generation is outstripping the ability of conventional tools, techniques, and processes to make effective use of that data. Application Development, Business Intelligence, and Compliance Reporting are three key IT functions impacted by the growth and availability of data. Together, these “ABCs” of data can enable lower costs and greater revenue, but each relies on better access to more data in order to be effective.
In each area, Data as a Service can provide faster, cheaper, and easier access to critical data that is today locked away in production databases.
DaaS Defined
Data as a Service (DaaS) describes an approach to making useful data available to key users in a timely, secure, and cost effective manner. DaaS can include new techniques for existing data centers, new architecture designs such as private clouds, or fully outsourced models within a public cloud. In any scenario, the goal is to enable broad and timely self-‐service access to business-‐critical information. That data is often housed in relational databases, running in production within the corporate data center. Examples include purchase
transaction databases, customer databases, patient health care databases, and telecom call record databases. Each of these typically serves important corporate applications such as ERP, CRM, Supply Chain and E-‐Commerce systems. In addition, these databases spawn data marts and operational data stores that are used for analysis and reporting purposes.
Today, if a business analyst needs copies of the ERP customer and transaction databases to analyze the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, the request typically flows through four different teams -‐ server, storage, network, and DBA -‐ using different change control processes. The server team provisions a new machine (physical or virtual) for the DBMS. The DBA team requests appropriate storage capacity from the storage team. If that isn’t available, the storage admin must provision more storage, mount the virtual disks, etc. Networking provides more configuration, and then the DBA team configures the new DBMS and applies logs, and so forth. In large organizations, this process can take days or even weeks, dragging
days. This process assumes that the management chain above and around the analyst has already approved the request.
Of course, most managers are familiar with the time and cost of provisioning and updating non-‐production database copies, and so request approval either may not happen or will only occur after significant discussion and delay. In practice, the management
approval/denial process adds yet another layer of drag, wasting time and delaying potential revenue benefit.
Data as a Service streamlines this process and provides the user with easy and quick access to necessary data, without impacting the production systems that power the business. Through standardization, automation, and virtualization, DaaS turns a multi-‐department process into a self-‐service transaction that can be handled with a few clicks within a web interface. Standardization makes use of published APIs to access and copy data from production databases. Automation shortens both provisioning time and refresh time, ensuring that the
information provided through DaaS is up to date. Finally, virtualization cuts time and cost by eliminating redundant hardware or software needs.
Of course, DaaS is a very broad technique for streamlining data provisioning and access. It is useful to apply DaaS to some common scenarios to better understand its value.
Multiple CIO surveys indicate that three top initiatives are application delivery, business intelligence, and compliance reporting, i.e. the “ABCs” of DaaS. Each enables business management to cut costs, move into new markets, generate more revenue, and avoid risk. Application delivery -‐ through new app development or application modernization -‐ allows organizations to capture new revenue and offer new services. Business intelligence helps optimize operations to increase revenue. Compliance reporting ensures that regulations are being followed and prevents penalties and damage to the business brand and reputation.
Each of these initiatives is powered by data, typically the data that is stored in the
production databases that support business operations. Therefore, each can be enhanced via DaaS. By virtualizing the data locked within enterprise databases, Delphix delivers data as a service to application developers, business analysts, and corporate auditors.
Application Development — Test Data as a Service
New applications are often enablers of new business opportunities. Whether the apps are configured versions of commercial packages or custom-‐developed by in-‐house staff, business applications require useful, accurate, and secure test data. Some test data might require masking, where sensitive fields such as social security number, patient name, asset balance, etc. are obscured. Other test data sets might require coordinated snapshots from multiple systems, such as master data management information from a product database, inventory database, customer database, and sales transaction database. Finally, some test data sets might require test data from specific points in time, e.g. from both the week before and the week after a particular sales promotion was launched.
In each case, application developers and testers require more than a simple copy of a production database. Providing developers and testers with useful test data in a timely manner can greatly affect the delivery speed and quality of business applications. Today, test data creation is cumbersome and can delay projects by weeks or months. Delphix creates virtual copies of production databases, quickly, easily, and cost effectively, so that application teams can deliver new apps and updates sooner.
Delphix can create masked virtual test databases, can automatically refresh copies based on updates to production databases, and can enable developers to create and manage their own databases, synchronized to any point in time. One global financial services organization found that by automating the creation and management of test data, it cut tens of millions of dollars in storage costs and process overhead from a single development project.
Test Data as a Service can also cut the time and cost required to upgrade packaged applications, by generating new test data for certification and acceptance testing. In many cases, the infrastructure cost and time to create temporary upgrade databases and to generate appropriate and secure test data can prevent or delay projects.
Business Intelligence — Reporting Data as a Service
Demands to make more data available for business analysis cause most CIOs to rank
business intelligence (BI) as a “Top 3” initiative this year. While IT executives see the value in providing more data for analysis, they struggle to keep up with business demands for this data.
Useful information is often locked away in mission-‐critical transactional databases, which are off-‐limits for analysis purposes. Instead, the data must be fed into non-‐production reporting data marts, usually through ETL tools and cumbersome processes. These tools help create multiple duplicate copies of large production databases, but also duplicate the storage requirements and costs of those systems. A 2 TB transactional e-‐commerce
can make the process overhead even worse. Unlike conventional solutions, Delphix enables widespread, timely and cost-‐ effective reporting and BI analysis.
With Delphix’s virtualization platform, business analysts can instantly create, via self-‐service, their own virtual copies of production databases without impacting production operations. Delphix works within an
organization’s existing BI infrastructure; it does not impact or affect reporting tools or DBMS operations. The primary effect is better analysis, from fresher data, with less cost and overhead. For example, one large credit union uses Delphix to offload analysis work from a key production database by creating virtual reporting databases at quarter-‐close. Delphix also helps the credit union load its data warehouse, for additional analysis. As a result, business analysts are able to perform financial analysis weeks earlier than with previous solutions.
Compliance Reporting — Audit Data as a Service
For organizations in industries such as financial services, telecommunications and health care, managing confidential information is fundamental to business operations. A hospital could not function without handling patient data, a mobile network operator could not function without handling customer call data, and an investment bank could not function without handling customer asset data.
In each of these industries, better analysis of data -‐ including sensitive or protected information -‐ is key to business competitiveness. As a result, firms often create multiple copies of sensitive databases for reporting, analysis, or application development purposes.
With each copy, the risk of data breach increases.
In response, each of these industries faces increasing regulation over the handling of protected data. HIPAA and HITECH in health care, GLBA in financial services, and
Sarbanes-‐Oxley in all industries are just a few of the regulations that impose penalties for audit and compliance failure in
handling sensitive information. Firms in these industries must balance the need for greater data distribution and access with the need for greater control over sensitive information. By leveraging Audit Data as a Service, via chain of custody reports and usage tracking,
organizations can improve their compliance reporting and reduce risk of breach as well as cost of auditing.
Delphix extends data control by virtualizing copies of databases containing protected information, and controlling access to data files via the Delphix platform. As a result, Delphix can easily produce chain of custody reports that list every copy created of a sensitive
database, as well as access history and one-‐click deactivation of any database. For example, one healthcare-‐related firm, regulated by the FDA, uses Delphix to help automate auditing of medical data access.
Delphix Delivers the “ABCs” of DaaS
Through virtualization of the data files within production databases, Delphix is able to provide Data as a Service to a variety of non-‐production users across the enterprise. Some of the most compelling scenarios are the “ABCs” of DaaS – enhancing Application
Development through Test Data as a Service, improving Business Intelligence through
Reporting Data as a Service, and extending Compliance Reporting through Audit Data as a
Service.
Delphix removes the cost, time, and effort required to create copies of production databases. Too often, this overhead prevents effective use of data to improve business operations. Many development, testing, reporting, and analysis projects may not clear the investment hurdle of provisioning new storage and a new DBMS, as well as ongoing ETL and refresh processes. Delphix dramatically alters the economics of managing data for non-‐ production purposes, via self-‐service provisioning and elimination of process and hardware costs. Leading organizations are using Delphix today to do more, spend less, and cut risk — all at the same time.
