Partner Spotlight: Safe Software

Data-Driven Decisions in a Real-Time World

Top Data Integration Trends in 2020

February 19, 2020

Working with location-based information and analytics in 2020 involves a more complex set of challenges than ever: we have to manage huge data volumes, real-time information streams, and a rising number of systems that produce and consume data. Governments and other organizations need to harmonize information to ensure all datasets are up to date, comply with standards, and deliver high-quality data wherever it’s needed. This is why data integration workflows have become a crucial part of operations for companies around the world.

Here at Safe Software, we designed FME 2020 to help you tackle these challenges and more. Let’s look at the top industry trends in 2020 and how you can take your organization to the next level using data integration workflows.

Connect Real-Time, High Volume Datasets

With sensors collecting data in real-time, storage becoming cheaper, and information becoming more valuable as organizations strive to make data-driven decisions, data volumes are growing rapidly. The number of data formats and types also continues to expand as new systems and standards are created to handle all of this information.

To meet this challenge, organizations need to connect all of their data and ensure all systems stay synchronized and up to date. Interconnected systems are more valuable than isolated ones, real-time information is more valuable than static, and data lakes are more valuable than data silos. This is why we’ve expanded FME’s format support to include Big Data systems like Google BigQuery, Snowflake, and Entwine point clouds, along with many new and improved connections to GIS and location-based data. For example, with FME’s native Revit support, technology professionals can connect directly to Revit models and perform advanced integrations, transformations, and conversions.

Case Study: Santa Clara County is working towards NG911 by building integrated, city-sourced maps for their emergency dispatch system. Read about it at fme.ly/scc

Data-Driven Decisions

Organizations need to implement efficient ways of gathering insight from all of their data. This means integrating and analyzing all available data on an ongoing basis. Raw data must be harmonized, insight must be drawn from it, and the results must be shared with all stakeholders.

To do this, organizations need to implement repeatable data integration workflows that generate intelligence on an ongoing basis. This is why we’ve added new tools in FME 2020 to connect to machine learning services for natural language processing and computer vision, including those developed by Google, Azure, Amazon, and open source libraries. With FME’s existing ability to integrate, process, and share data, it’s more intuitive than ever to generate data-driven decisions from any information.

Case Study: The State of Indiana homogenized data from 92 counties for their online GIS portal, making data available for initiatives and emergency response. Read about it at fme.ly/soi

Automate Everything with Enterprise Integration Patterns

The 65 Enterprise Integration Patterns documented by Hohpe and Woolf have revolutionized the way organizations implement their technology systems. It’s important to be familiar with these patterns and to know when to implement them, because they make it easy to harmonize information across teams, keep all systems up to date, execute powerful automated workflows, and facilitate the daily operations of any modern enterprise.

To help organizations get the benefits of these patterns, we’ve worked to enable them in FME 2020. Last year’s FME release introduced “Automations”, a workflow environment that makes it easy to launch FME Workspaces in response to events (like an email arriving or a data file changing). This year, we extended the FME Platform to deliver true enterprise integration capabilities with unrivaled data type support. As with the rest of FME’s functionality, we designed this capability with all technology professionals in mind: these patterns can be achieved using an intuitive graphical interface. No coding required.

See Also: 8 Ways Local Governments Can Improve Operations Using Data Integration

Looking ahead, we plan to continue expanding the FME Platform as a complete Enterprise Integration solution. The challenges of 2021 are sure to expand upon those of 2020, introduce new ones, and re-shape old ones. We want to help you tackle all of these by designing each FME release to meet current trends. Let us know what problems you need to solve, and help us dream up what perfect solution would help you fix them!

Don’t miss the FME 2020 launch webinar to find out everything we’re excited about – like all of the top-voted user requests we’ve implemented to improve your FME authoring and automating experiences. Register at safe.com/webinar.