All About Real-Time Data Networks For Businesses
Data and information used to be fairly static. Data resided on a printed page or in one database. Data was accessed periodically by the few, for one purpose, and in a deliberate method.
The New Norm: Real-Time Data Networks. Things involving data have now changed with the proliferation of computing devices and web access being anywhere, anytime and being a part of everything we do. The real-time movement of data has become the life blood of all information technology. Data use to be all about the storage and periodic access of data. Now with the web and the proliferation of computing devices, real-time data networking enables and integrates sensors, video, RFID tags, mobile devices, personal computers, servers, data services, and cloud computing. Data has changed from static data to data that is real-time and in constant motion.
What Controls and Influences Data In Motion?
When you think about data moving across networks, you first think of file transfer. Data movement has evolved to be more than simple data transfer. Below are things that control, drive and influence the real-time movement of data over networks.
B2B Data Transfer. Data or file transfer are “generic terms for the act of transmitting files over a computer network or the Internet”. There are numerous ways and protocols to transfer data over a network. Data can be transferred by either “pushing” the data to another computer or “pulling” the data from another computer. See posting, B2B – Confusion Over Data Formats and Protocols, for more on data transfer protocols and formats.
XML-Based Data Feeds. A data feed is a mechanism for users to receive updated data from data sources. Many data feeds today are machine-to-human interfaces based on XML-based technology such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS) where readers and applications display headlines and hot links to web pages. See posting, Why Use XML?, for more on XML-based data feeds.
Data Access Through Application Programming Interfaces (API). Just as the Graphic User Interface (GUI) revolutionized businesses in the ’90s, Application Programming Interfaces (API) are revolutionizing business today. GUI enabled average users to interact with software with little or no technical knowledge and access data controlled by the software. Now APIs coupled with cheap data storage and cheap broadband networks enable non-technical users to mashup data from various applications in near-real-time. For businesses, APIs now offer the promise of having the right information, at the right place, and at the right time to make real-time decisions. See posting, Application Programming Interfaces (API) Enabling Business Innovation, for more on how APIs are enabling businesses to operate in a real-time information environment.
Data Synchronization. Data synchronization is the process of establishing consistency among data from a source to a target data storage and vice versa and the continuous harmonization of the data over time. It is fundamental to a wide variety of applications, including file synchronization and mobile device synchronization e.g. for PDAs. Lotus Notes was an early user of data synchronization where e-mail messages were periodically synchronized with the user’s local computer and the Lotus Notes server.
EDI Data Transformation, Translation, and Mapping. In it’s simplest form data transformation converts data from a source data format into destination data format. To do this, there is the need of a data map and a computer program that maps or transforms data elements from one format to another. Many times data is transformed when data is transferred from one computer application to another computer application. See posting, Advantages of EDI, for an example of how and why data is transformed using EDI when two business exchange electronic business documents.
Business Data Mashups. Data mashups for the most part are made possible by the advent of the world wide web. Data mashups have the potential to be major enablers for business operations and customer service to leverage the ever increasing amount of business data that is available today. A data mashup is defined as a web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service. A real estate listing service combined with Google Maps is an example of a mashup. Data mashups offer advantages over data warehouses in that they can be implemented fairly quickly, at less cost, and can integrate more real-time data to support operations and customer service. Find out more about Business Data Mashups For Leveraging Multiple Data Sources.
Trusting Data Sources. With the internet comes an onslaught of data. What data do you trust and what data do you ignore? No one believes everything they read on the web, but it can be challenging figuring out what data sources to trust and minimizing being taken in by misinformation. It wasn’t that hard to figure out who or what to trust when information flowed a lot slower in the off-line world. You could trust your textbooks, you could trust your mother, and you could trust the local newspaper. It just seemed natural on who or what you could trust or not trust before the internet. Now with all this real-time data, we need to be more deliberate in figuring out who and what we can trust online. See posting Overcoming Web Information Glut – Use the Trust Quadrant to Decide Who and What to Trust for insight on the who, what, and why of trusting and not trusting data sources.
Protecting the Ownership of Data While Maximizing Real-Time Data. Ideally, data needed for an application is freely available. Free, accessible data is easy to move and transfer between computers in real-time. There are challenges when data or content is owned by someone else or in contains Personally Identifiable Information (PII). PII is information that can be used to uniquely identify, contact, or locate a single person or can be used with other sources to uniquely identify a single individual. In these situations data is needed to be protected both at rest (storage) and in motion. This can be done through procedural methods such as password protection or the use of encryption. More and more businesses and application developers are balancing the need for the free movement of data versus the need for personal data privacy and the need to protect data rights to content. See posting, Can We Have Both: Real-Time Data and Personal Data Privacy?, for more on the challenges of maximizing real-time data and protecting personal data privacy. See Protecting Data Rights and the Free Flow of Information, for more on the challenges of protecting data rights.
Corporate Data Security. Businesses have additional challenges with securing the movement of data. Not only do they need to protect Personally Identifiable Information, but they need to protect financial information such as credit card information, and proprietary data that keeps them competitive in the marketplace.
Open Data and Real-Time Data Networking. More and more businesses are having to balance the needs of information security with the need to move data faster and faster in real-time. If all data did not need to be protected against unauthorized use, the technology is here to move data in real-time and for anyone to access it at anytime. More and more businesses, service providers, and application developers are having to identify what data needs to be protected and what data can be accessed freely.
Inhibitors to Real-Time Data Networks. Governments, internet service providers, hardware providers, and application providers can restrict the real-time movement of data over networks. These restrictions with real-time data movement are challenges that can be lumped under such terms as Net Neutrality, Open Systems, and Free Commerce. A company, a Government, a policy, or a group of people can seriously restrict the flow of data by not being net neutral, having proprietary, closed systems, or restricting free commerce. See posting, Systems, Networks, and Governments that Restrict Real-Time Data Networking, for more on the inhibitors of real-time data networking.
.
Real-Time Data and Augmented Reality. Computers, the internet, and the real world are quickly converging into a real-time, augmented reality. Social media is only the beginning. What is making this possible is the integration of web-based technologies as well as real-world sensor technologies such as video, instrument sensors, RFID tags, and biometrics. To make this augmented reality integration occur requires the real-time and near-real-time movement of data. Find out more about Real-Time Data in Motion Creating a New, Augmented Reality – what it is, what it can do, and real-time data trends.
