What is Data Integration?

Data integration is the process of combining data from many different data sources, typically for analysis, business intelligence, reporting, or loading into an application. Data integration is highly relevant to most organisations of medium to large size because they typically use a wide array of applications to gain efficiency and serve their customers better. Most of the time, these applications all have their own databases and data stores. Whether these applications are on-premise or in the cloud, they are only truly useful if they share data between them so data application is a must. In order to make qualified business decisions, organizations need to have one unified view of their customer data. Developing processes for consolidating data from multiple applications and creating a unified view of data assets, this is what data integration is all about.