Denodo Brings Data Management to Academia, the Cloud

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Data management is hard, and it’s not getting easier, thanks to the continued tsunami of big data (a data-nami, as it were). One company that’s aiming to help with the continued digital onslaught is data virtualization vendor Denodo, which recently launched an academic program to expand data management education in universities, and today unveiled a new flagship cloud offering.

Before founding Denodo Technologies in 1999, Angel Viña spent 20 years leading computing and engineering research teams at various universities in Spain. While the data virtualization software that Denodo develops did start out as a research project at the University of A Coruña, the topic of data management as a whole is not broadly taught in university, Viña says.

“In computer science, they teach a lot of technology which is a very low level–low level in the sense of touching the hardware,” says Viña, who is the CEO of Denodo. “They’re dedicated to that. You end up touching application development, databases, things like that. But data management is not a common topic. It was not a common topic definitely when I was in academia. It’s not today.”

Angel Viña, the founder and CEO of Denodo

One of the reasons for the lack of data management education is that it sits at the junction of how the data is stored and how business uses it, he says. While university computer science programs may take up storage as a topic to teach and research, they typically don’t get into the nitty-gritty details of how the data is moved, prepped, secured, and governed.

Data science has definitely made inroads at universities over the past decade, particularly as it relates to ensuring the use of sound statistical techniques in machine learning and predictive analytics. But those programs typically focus more on the pointy end of the AI and analytics stick, and not the more pedestrian day-to-day needs of data management.

With the new Denodo Academic Program unveiled last month, the company aims to shift the focus to data engineering principles, including the topics of data integration, data architecture, security, and governance.

“We wanted to really influence that and bring some data engineering, data management flavor,”  Viña tells BigDATAwire in an interview last week. “It’s also about how to really manage security and compliance and governance of the data. It’s about understanding data traffic, all these data pipelines as an entity that you need to manage, not just the storage…[but] the process for the data to flow into the hands of the business user.”

Denodo works with some of the most sophisticated companies in the world, including JPMorgan Chase, All Nippon Airlines, and others. The idea behind the Denodo Academic Program is to take some of those best practices for data management and present them to university students so they have a better grasp of the challenges they’ll face when they graduate and begin to work with data in the real world.

Denodo’s program includes a series of self-paced training modules that are delivered virtually. It will cover topics like logical data management, data access, using BI tools to visualize data, and the use of data catalogs. It will also include access to Denodo’s data virtualization software.

So far, five universities have committed to adopting the Denodo Academic Program, including Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore, Roma Tre and the University of Padua of Italy, Dwaraka Doss Goverdhan Doss Vaishnav College in India, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s E-Business Consortium (UWEBC) in the United States.

The University of Padua is looking forward to working with Denodo to “create impactful data virtualization and integration projects,” Gianmaria Silvello, professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Padua’s Department of Information Engineering, said in a press release. “In one example, we are utilizing the Denodo Platform within a Horizon Europe project funded by the EU to enhance disease detection, treatment response planning, and medical knowledge exploration. This integrated framework combines diverse health data, including genetics, while ensuring compliance with privacy regulations.”

Folks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are eager to work with Denodo to push forward with applied learning, peer learning, and professional development. “Through the UWEBC and the Wisconsin School of Business Consulting Capstone, students are exposed to real-world challenges, fostering hands-on experience with innovative solutions like data virtualization in the cloud and advanced analytics with predictive analytics,” UWEBC Director Doug Barton said in a press release. “These collaborations not only enrich Denodo’s Academic Program by offering a diverse range of perspectives but also enhance the student experience, empowering future business leaders to apply both theoretical knowledge and practical insights.”

Deonodo Agora

Denodo’s Agora offering includes a control plane and a execution plane (Image courtesy Denodo)

In other news, today Denodo launched Agora, a cloud-based version of the Denodo Platform. The new offering enables customers to enjoy the same benefits of data virtualization that customers received with on-prem deployments of the Denodo Platform–including the reduction of data duplication through semantic unification–but to do so from the cloud.

“One of the key values of our technology is the capability to unify semantically different data assets,” Viña says. “And that part is very important because it’s the dream of all the business executives to have unified semantics across the different departments in my organization and unify the different data silos that I may have.”

Agora is designed to reduce the complexity in deploying the Denodo data virtualization technology, thereby helping customers get the benefits faster. Customers can manage the Agora themselves, or opt to have Denodo take the reins for a fully managed solution.

The new service consists of two pieces, including a control plane and an execution plane. The control plane is designed to assist adminstrators with several tasks, including developing and deploying data models, managing access roles, and implementing data security, and managing system performance. The execution plane, meanwhile, enacts the data policies created in the control plane via Denodo’s technologies, such as the Virtual DataPort (VDP), the scheduler, and a data catalog.

“Denodo’s core value has always been about simplifying access to data and delivering it in real time, regardless of where it lives,” Kevin Bohan, Denodo’s director of product marketing, says in a blog post. “With Agora, you still get that, but now Denodo also takes care of running the platform for you.

You can learn more about Agora here. For more information on the Denodo Academic Program, click here.

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