Many data management professionals agree that the increasing volume and complexity of data require a new approach to data integration with its traditional tools and methods. Organizations today are expanding their usage of information-as-a-service (also called data services) to support new business requirements, such as real-time data integration, creating data domains, improving security, integration with unstructured data and external sources.

Let’s take closer look at a data services approach in the data integration. First of all, it helps bring in data from more sources. This provides a better presentation of the important information for decision-making, bringing a return on investment in a shorter period time, compared to using data from a single warehouse.

Secondly, data services are the way to liberate the data from specific applications and silos. State-of-the-art data integration solutions can turn your data into services, which can then be called upon by different applications, portals, and even mobile devices. Data services make your data more widely available, as you can reach it from anywhere, anytime.

Many data integration products are not really integration systems, but simply means of slow data warehouses. With the breakdown of these warehouses, you no longer have the data locked up in backend databases. Applications in the Cloud are interchanging data much more easily. This efficiency means that the closest future of data integration is now closely tied to the development of the data services approach.