By Tomydas Pall, Senior Product Manager
Data mesh: A microservices equivalent for data
A ‘data mesh’ is a decentralized approach to managing and organizing data within large organizations. It organizes data by specific business domains, such as, finance, marketing, sales, customer service, etc. and provides data ownership to those specific business functions. A data mesh is akin to the microservices architecture but applied to data management. It is an architectural pattern that emphasizes decentralization, distributing data ownership across the organization, and employing a governance model for securely sharing data.
How can an iPaaS support a ‘data mesh’ architecture?
iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) can play a pivotal role in supporting a data mesh architecture by facilitating the integration and orchestration of data across various domains within an organization. iPaaS provides essential tools and capabilities for connecting disparate systems and data sources, crucial for implementing the decentralized, domain-oriented approach that data mesh advocates.
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Seamless data integration
Facilitating data connections: iPaaS simplifies the process of connecting diverse data sources and systems, whether they are on-premises or in the cloud. This capability is essential in a data mesh, where data from different domains needs to be accessible and interoperable.
Standardized data access: An iPaaS offers pre-built connectors for applications, databases, file systems, and API endpoints, helping to standardize data access across the organization. Integrations can also be packaged as APIs for enabling independence of different data products across the organization. This standardization is crucial for ensuring data can be easily shared and used by different domain teams within the data mesh framework.
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Automation and orchestration
Workflow automation: iPaaS enables the automation of workflows across different applications and data sources. This capability supports the orchestration of data flows and transformations needed by various data products, aiding complex data operations at scale.
Data synchronization: iPaaS efficiently manages synchronization tasks, ensuring that updates and changes are consistently applied across systems, a critical requirement in decentralized settings.
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Governance and compliance
Centralized monitoring and governance tools: While advocating for decentralization, data mesh also demands robust governance to maintain data quality and compliance. iPaaS provides powerful monitoring and governance tools that enforce policies and maintain oversight of integrations and workflows.
Compliance assurance: iPaaS also ensures compliance with relevant data protection regulations such as HIPAA, SOC, ISO, CCPA and GDPR, a vital feature for data mesh architectures handling sensitive or regulated data.
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Scalability
Elastic scalability: iPaaS, as a cloud platform, is inherently designed to scale elastically and seamlessly adjust to workload demands. Additionally an iPaaS solution offering message queueing to provide elastic scalability with respect to increased data throughputs can also help aid scalability. This is crucial as the variety and volume of data products increase in a data mesh.
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Democratization of data
Enabling broader data access: A user-friendly iPaaS interface and tools simplify data management for non-technical domain experts, supporting the data mesh’s goal of making data accessible to all organizational stakeholders.
Jitterbit’s Harmony iPaaS platform can effectively support and enhance the implementation of a data mesh architecture. Harmony is a low-code integration platform that enables you to automate workflows and streamline business processes across the enterprise. It addresses the critical needs of seamless integration, robust automation, stringent governance, scalable performance, and broad data accessibility.
For more information about Harmony iPaaS, visit jitterbit.com/harmony.
