Overview of IBM Cloud Pak for Data

Run anywhere

The Cloud Pak for Data data fabric

A data fabric architecture enables your enterprise to unlock the value of your data in a hybrid multicloud data landscape. Moving to a data fabric architecture transforms the way that your enterprise integrates, governs, and uses data for analytics, data science, customer master data, and compliance.

With a data fabric, you can have a secure and consistent way to access data from disparate sources. You can eliminate inefficient, repetitive, and manual data access and integration processes. A data fabric architecture bridges the gap between the sources and provides business-ready data to support your company's needs. You can work with data from various types of sources across a hybrid and multi-cloud landscape, while you keep that data secure and trusted with the full breadth of integrated data management capabilities.

The following image shows a data fabric with various data sources:

Your data engineers need tools to prepare, transform, and virtualize data. Your data quality analysts need tools to measure the quality of the data. Your governance team needs tools to control, protect, and enrich your data. Your data consumers, such as business analysts and data scientists, need tools to collaboratively develop insights and models. With the Cloud Pak for Data platform of integrated tools, your organization can efficiently work together to use your data to improve your business.

For more information about the data fabric solution, see Data fabric use cases.

Ready for AI

To be competitive and successful, your enterprise must leverage the power of artificial intelligence.

Cloud Pak for Data helps you climb the AI ladder by providing a suite of services that support you in your journey to AI.

Collect

Cloud Pak for Data helps you connect to your data, no matter where it lives. Cloud Pak for Data includes a Connections page that lists connections that can be used by multiple services. Some services support additional data sources that you can connect to from the service. The platform makes it simple to access your data.

Organize

The IBM Knowledge Catalog service helps you organize your data through data classification and governance. With the IBM Knowledge Catalog service, you can develop an information architecture that is on-point and ready to keep up with the scale of your data.

Analyze

Cloud Pak for Data also includes numerous analytics services that can help you generate scalable insight on demand. For example, with Cloud Pak for Data you can use:

• Cognos Dashboards, which enables you to create stunning dashboards to quickly visualize data.
• SPSS Modeler (premium service), which enables you to create flows to prepare and blend data, build and manage models, and visualize the results.

Infuse

With Cloud Pak for Data you can make AI a part of your standard operating procedure. Whether you want to build smarter apps with premium Watson services, deploy machine learning models into production at scale with Watson Machine Learning, or infuse your AI with trust and transparency with Watson OpenScale.

There are many more services that you can install on Cloud Pak for Data. For a complete list, see Services.

With Cloud Pak for Data, raw data becomes trusted data that you can analyze to gain insights and maximize business outcomes.

Support for your data lifecycle

Your data isn't static. Your machine learning models shouldn't be static either. As data is added to your on-premises and cloud data sources, you need to continually test and tune your machine learning models to ensure that they give you valuable insight. But you need to make sure that you're working with high-quality data, which is where the data governance and data integration and preparation services that you can install on Cloud Pak for Data come in.

You know the old adage: Garbage in, garbage out. If your data is poor, your results aren't meaningful. By bringing data stewards and data engineers together with your data scientists, you can ensure that your data is ready for analysis.

Additionally, you can ensure that any analytics assets that your data scientists create, such as models, notebooks, and Shiny apps are included in a data catalog so that they can be governed and maintained like any other data assets in your enterprise.

With Cloud Pak for Data, you can continuously discover new, valuable insights as data is added to your ecosystem.

Modern and modular

Cloud Pak for Data provides a modern data and analytics architecture that is elastic, scalable, and reliable. The end-to-end platform means that you can spend less time managing your data and more time using it to grow your business.

You can choose which services you install on Cloud Pak for Data so that you can use your resources wisely. Whether you want to modernize your data landscape, generate real-time insights to drive business transformations, or deliver exceptional, AI-augmented customer experiences, Cloud Pak for Data has a solution that can propel your business forward.

If you want to become a data-driven enterprise, Cloud Pak for Data should be at the center of your data and analytics ecosystem.

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