The purpose of data management is to allow companies to deliver and use data in a consistent, accessible, and secure way to meet their daily needs and objectives.

In order to store, access, and use data effectively, there needs to be a place where this data can live.

Whether it’s storing historical or current data, data lakes can offer the accessibility your company needs. But what are they and how
are they managed? Read on to learn more. 

What is a Data Lake?

A data lake is simply a place to store and save all kinds of files in the cloud.

Unlike a regular database or warehouse that can only store one type of file or data, a data lake allows you to store all kinds of data and all types of files. You can store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data taken from various applications, like social networks, videos, web apps, devices, and much more. These files could be CSV, PDF, JPEG, Excel files, etc. This is where it differs from a database.

In the past, you would store your NAV data in a database. It had a table structure, and everything inside the database required you to follow that structure layout. A data lake allows you to store all this information while simultaneously allowing you to store various file types alongside each other. For example, you can store CSV files next to image files.

Data Lake vs. Data Warehouse

Despite their similar concepts, data lakes and data warehouses are not synonymous terms. While they both can store data from various sources and can feed data to multiple apps, data lakes offer more data storage options.

A data warehouse stores data categorically, as well as processes and assists businesses with their analytics. Data stored in a data warehouse can take in data from multiple sources, but it must have a consistent data structure.

However, as we covered before, a data lake can store data in any format, from multiple sources, making it a less limiting, more affordable option than data warehouses.

Benefits of using a data lake

Data lakes offer businesses many benefits. From the ease and speed of accessing data to their cost-effective storage options, data lakes simplify data management and reduce the need for IT specialists. When given access, users from any department can utilize this data for reports. This helps prevents siloed data among departments and supports greater efficiency and awareness within your company.

Data lakes can store data in its native, raw form and offer flexible architecture.

The architecture of data lakes

The two components of data lakes are storage and compute. You can store these on-premises, in the cloud, or a combination of the two.

Data from these sources are often placed into data lakes:

  • SaaS (software as a service) applications
  • Business applications
  • Enterprise data warehouses (EDW)
  • Flat files storing transactional data
  • Device logs
  • IoT sensors

What is data lake management?

Data lake management involves the transferring of data from one or multiple sources to a data lake, all while making the necessary considerations for those sources and connectors, cleaning up data, and being mindful of data security along the way.

In general, managing a data lake is not easy. Whether an organization is using an open-source or a managed platform, figuring out the capacity of the host infrastructure to support scalability and maintaining data integrity are just a few of the concerns that pop up.

Who oversees data lake management?

With data coming from multiple locations, it’s important that data be managed, monitored, and cleaned up regularly.

In any company, the responsibility of managing data can fall on multiple team members. However, the following roles are generally the most vital to data lake management.

  • Regular tasks involved in data lake management are typically done by data engineers who build and maintain the data that comes in and out of the data lakes.
  • Business analysts often play a part in data lake management in part by trying to manage data quality and business objectives.
  • The chief data officer in an organization is at the executive level and oversees all data use.

Common terms for data lake management

When it comes to data lake management, there are some key aspects and terms with which you should be familiar.

  • Data ingestion: One-time, batch, or real-time data loads using connectors.
  • Data governance: Managing all the data stored.
  • Security: Making sure data is secure with sound protocols.
  • Quality: Covering what data is most valuable.
  • Data exploration: Helping identify correct data.
  • Data discovery: Tagging data for organization and interpretation.
  • Data auditing: Tracking changes made, who made them, and when.
  • Data lineage: Tracking data movement.

Azure Data Lakes

What is an Azure Data Lake?

At eOne Solutions, our favorite way to store data is in a Microsoft Azure Data Lake. An Azure Data Lake is a storage account hosted in Azure, Microsoft’s public cloud. They provide a cost-effective way for you to archive that data. This enables you to access that data in the cloud even after you decide to turn off and retire your on-premise SQL server.

In addition to these perks, your customers will still have full control over all the data in their Azure accounts. The data lake is stored in their account, not anywhere else.

How much does an Azure Data Lake cost?

During any data migration, data should be gone through and cleaned up, so you aren’t paying for wasted space. Whether you’re moving all your data to a data lake, bringing some, or bringing all of it over to your new system, this clean-up process is important if you want to save money and maintain optimal performance for your new system.

That being said, Azure Data Lakes are incredibly cost-effective.

For a month, you can get a terabyte of data storage for $20 and access it endlessly.

In the last year, we’ve run several scenarios and done an incredible number of migrations and migration tests with whole databases. We have been running automated tests against the database and demos with the database every day and it only cost us $5 to house gigabytes upon gigabytes of data. In one month, we carried out around 100 migrations of GP for three companies, and it cost us a mere $0.44.

Azure data lake is an excellent way of storing essential data while keeping costs down.

Is data secure with an Azure Data Lake?

Yes, it is. You can read more about Microsoft’s security, compliance, and privacy protocols for Azure in detail on Microsoft’s Trust Center. You can also view this list of compliance and certifications for Azure an
d Azure’s compliance documentation.

How long is the set up?

You can easily create a data lake in less than a minute. We show you how in this how-to video.

Popdock, Your Data Lake Companion

Convenience is key for productivity, adoption, and getting your daily tasks done.

That’s one of the reasons why eOne Solutions created Popdock.

Popdock is the bridge that connects the contents of your data lake with your system. It makes data easy to view inside the Popdock app or through the Popdock interface inside your system.

No IT specialists required

Unlike regular data lake management, there is a better, easier, and more accessible way to manage your data and data lake.

Typically, interacting with and managing data lakes is more on the developer side of specialties. However, you don’t need to be a developer to manage a data lake with Popdock.

We’ve worked hard at eOne Solutions to provide tools like Popdock that don’t require a developer to use them. You don’t need help uploading or accessing that history ever again. It is approachable enough for any team member to access the data they need.

Popdock is an easy solution to archive any data to your data lake/Azure Data Lake and provides users with self-service, cloud-reporting abilities. Your team no longer needs to rely on your IT department and data engineers/data specialists to access the necessary data you need to do your job. Popdock empowers end users with better data access so you can answer data questions in any app.

With Popdock you can:

  • Simplify reporting and take the reliance off your IT department
    • Search
    • Filtering
    • Grouping/subgrouping
    • Adding/removing columns
    • Combine data
    • Use calculations to translate data
    • Export and share
  • Customize, calculate, and format
    • Use your terminology: Rename fields and columns on standard lists and custom lists that make sense for your team
    • Add calculated fields using functions or scripting
    • Use restrictions and parameters to filter data
    • Create and use global variables to use throughout Popdock
  • Visualize data with charts and summaries
    • Take universal actions: Copy values and rows
    • Make connector-specific actions: Things you can do specifically to that source system (e.g., for a helpdesk app data, update a ticket, open the record or change the ticket status)
    • Take custom Actions: Processes you can create yourself to open a website or call an API (e.g., call an automation in Microsoft PowerAutomate or eOne’s SmartConnect to run)

Popdock Data Lake Upload Tool

The Popdock Data Lake Upload Tool allows you to hook into your on-premise systems, extract the data, and move it to the data lake, preparing it for you to use to embed data in other systems. This tool is a part of Popdock, and you are not charged an additional cost to use it.

Accessing historical data with Popdock

Whether you have already moved or are planning on moving from one system to another, you can access your historical data with Popdock.

Harnessing the power of Popdock and an Azure Data Lake, you can turn off your old SQL Server and system and view your historical data in your new system’s interface, whenever you want.

Accessing all types of data with Popdock

With Popdock, you can archive all types of data, not just historical data.

Sometimes you may need to offload older data from a system because it’s a more affordable way of storing data. Other times, you may need to do a full backup of certain sets of data or an entire database.

Whatever the case may be, you can archive and access any kind of data with Popdock and an Azure Data Lake.

Setting up reports with Popdock

No matter what your needs are for data storage and viewing, you can set up reports quickly and easily and access whatever data you need to work with and view. It’s easy to set up reports using Popdock’s fast, simple-to-use interface as it connects your system to the contents of your Azure Data Lake.

Learn more at popdock.eonesolutions.com/virtual-integration.

Is Popdock secure?

Everything we do at eOne Solutions ensures that your data is secure and that you have control over it. We never store your data. Your data is stored in your accounts and you’re only granting Popdock access to read the data.

Reach out for more information

To simplify your data lake management, you don’t need to hire a data engineer or specialist.

Whether you need to access your data from a data lake from multiple apps, migrate historical data to your new system, connect and work amongst multiple cloud-based apps, perform seamless integrations from your on-prem systems to a cloud-based app, or several other scenarios, Popdock can provide exactly the help, support, and performance you need to work efficiently and surpass your goals.

Don’t waste time, money, and effort. Increase accessibility and efficiency by using Popdock as your data access interface and easily access external data in any of your apps.

Contact our sales team at sales@eonesolutions.com or 888-319-3663 ext. 1 for more personalized help in answering your questions. They are always eager to provide help and answers for your data access and migration needs.