How Azure Data Share makes data integration easier
Imagine the scenario - you use an outsourced EPOS system for tracking your sales, they hold your data but you want to analyse it yourself in combination with other enterprise datasets. Typically this would lead to you negotiating with your EPOS provider to be issued a username and password to access their FTP server where they upload the sales at the end of each day. Since this is usually an additional service you can expect to be charged for it and then you have the expense of implementing a routine to download the files (often as archives that need decompressing), upload them back into your Azure subscription and then import them into a database to make the data available for analysis. You get the idea – this is a long-winded process just to be able to analyse your own data.
Azure Data Share will fundamentally change this – companies providing systems that hold/create data (publishers) based on Azure will be able to simply setup a data share with their clients that will make the files available with hourly updates automatically being made accessible, no additional configuration required. On the other side the clients (subscribers) will have control over the data within their own subscription and be able to configure their routines knowing that the source data will update automatically – you can even go on to implement a Logic App to automatically process the data that’s triggered when the Blob Storage updates! Both publishers and subscribers can see when data has been updated and accessed.
Given the ease of use I can foresee that this will become a standard method for cloud providers to share clients’ own data back to them in a safe, secure and auditable manner. As Microsoft expand on the storage that Azure Data Share can manage it will only become more useful.
For more information about Microsoft Azure Data Share or any of the Microsoft Data Analytics products, call us on 01635 889222 or email using this link '/contact#Azure-Data-Share'
