How does data federation work?

For data to be valuable, it has to be useful and that means it needs to drive business insights. But in the modern data landscape, data often resides in multiple locations. For example, an organization might use a data warehouse for one use case and a data lake for another. Sometimes these choices follow divisions in the organizational structure with different departments each creating their own data source. 

This creates a siloing problem. In such a scenario, gaining insights becomes both complicated and costly, often requiring data to be moved from one system to another to create a single source of truth. But realizing this source of truth can be an unending task and many businesses either commit limitless resources to the task or never achieve success at all. Think of sisyphus rolling his rock up the hill for eternity. 

Solving data silo issues

Solving this problem is really what data federation is all about. Federation unlocks the value of your data by creating a connection across multiple data sources. This powerful approach gives businesses more options and increased flexibility, opening up a world of possibilities. Using federation, your organization no longer needs to move data unnecessarily to a central source of truth. Instead, you can focus on creating insights and driving value.

How do you connect to disparate data sources?

Federation is best when it offers lots of options. This ensures that no matter where your data lives it can connect with data in other sources. Starburst’s connector ecosystem includes 50+ connectors, allowing connections to both cloud and on-prem data sources. 

This breadth of connectors includes many enhanced proprietary connectors, further enhancing the options available. Overall, federation lowers costs, increases convenience, and improves versatility.