Data Virtualization enables access to physical data from various sources in a virtual manner, so that the data can be accessed, manipulated, and analyzed from one central location, without the need to know its physical format or location, and without having to move or copy it.

Data Virtualization is fully integrated into Cloud Pak for Data as a Service on IBM Cloud as part of the data fabric. Data Virtualization provides the virtualization capabilities of the data fabric architecture.

To get started, create a service instance of Data Virtualization and launch it in Cloud Pak for Data as a Service. Then, create connections to your data sources so that you can quickly create views across all of your organization’s data.

With Data Virtualization, your company can accomplish these goals:

• Simplify your analytics and make them more accurate because you’re querying the latest data at its source.
• Use real-time analytics efficiently and get current analytics for distributed data sources, with no need to store data outside your data center.
• Accelerate processing times by automatically organizing your data nodes into a collaborative network for computational efficiency.
• Take advantage of standard SQL through common interfaces such as R, Spark, Python, and Jupyter Notebooks in a single data repository where your SQL applications can connect and run.
• Centralize authentication and authorization for data sources in a trusted environment where credentials for your private databases are stored encrypted at the local device and are private to that device.

This service adds a workspace to Cloud Pak for Data as a Service.