Attunity Change Data Capture Powers SQL Server for BI, Cloud 
Microsoft will integrate Attunity’s change data capture (CDC) software with SQL Server to enable strategic capabilities for real-time business intelligence and cloud computing. Bundling Attunity’s CDC natively with SQL Server means IT will be able to meet users need for real-time data without suffering massive spikes or loads on CPU and bandwidth.
Microsoft will integrate Attunity’s change data capture (CDC) software with SQL Server to enable strategic capabilities for real-time business intelligence and cloud computing. Bundling Attunity’s CDC natively with SQL Server means IT will be able to meet users need for real-time data without suffering massive spikes or loads on CPU and bandwidth.
“We are focused on delivering a business platform that helps our customers maximize the value of their data for operations and business intelligence, on-premise and in the cloud,” said Denise Draper, Product Unit Manager at Microsoft.
“By making innovative technologies such as Attunity’s CDC available in SQL Server, we are making it easier to use data efficiently, enabling customers to capitalize on the lower cost of ownership of the Microsoft platform and cloud computing,” Draper added.
CDC is data integration technology that efficiently moves data from one location to another by processing only the changes in the database. “With CDC, moving or integrating data between systems can be done at a fraction of the time and cost,” Itamar Ankorion, Attunity’s Director of Marketing and Business Development told IDN.
Attunity has been a long-time data partner with Microsoft for SQL Server. This agreement provides SQL Server and SQL Server Integration Services users an end-to-end solution for replicating data across heterogeneous databases efficiently and rapidly, Ankorion added.
Microsoft SSIS is a component of the Microsoft SQL Server database software which has a flexible data warehousing tool for ETL (data extraction, transformation and loading), and can be used to perform a broad range of data migration tasks.
The Attunity CDC Suite supports 10+ sources, making integration, replication, and availability of enterprise data for BI efficient, real-time and affordable. Attunity’s offerings for real-time integration include: Attunity Stream, a real-time CDC software and Attunity Connect, a real-time connectivity solution to deliver information across heterogeneous systems.
Inside CDC for BI, Data Integration –
A Sign of the Times (in Real-Time)
The timing of the Microsoft/Attunity agreement comes as the industry is hitting a tipping point in the battle to balance IT costs and complexity against growing user demand for real-time data, integrated from multiple sources.
With Attunity’s CDC, moving or integrating data between systems can be done at a fraction of the time and cost,”
Itamar Ankorion
Director of Marketing & Business Development
Attunity
“The world has changed and people now expect information to be available instantly. Google is a great example, and influencer, for these changes,” Ankorion told IDN. “Search applications have now set customer expectations that they should be able to have an answer in seconds, and that puts a huge demand on business to gather information and relay it in useful ways,” he added.
And search engines are just one area pressuring the need for more instant results. “We’re seeing an explosion of mobile devices and tablets,” Ankorion noted, “and that is further increasing users’ demand for immediate seamless access to data -- no matter where it comes from.”
Given these pressures, many traditional ways of moving data are coming under stress, Ankorion said. “Companies used to move data over the weekend or overnight. But now, they need to crunch more data quickly and the costs to supply real-time data access to users can escalate very quickly,” under the pressures to buy more hardware, support and manage more data volumes and incur higher licensing costs.
CDC technology is a new weapon in this battle to provide real-time data access, even in the surge of higher data volumes. Attunity’s approach to CDC is to get changes via the database log. “This log-based CDC approach has the least impact on the source system,” Ankorion said. “Architects want to avoid triggers or tables to the database that can otherwise interfere or take resources.”
This log-based architecture also provides IT flexibility. “Attunity CDC provides data updates in near real-time or batch,” Ankorion said. “We track the changes and put the applications to work on different sizes batches. That means you can work on batches of any size over any time period, even ‘nanobatches’ for very short update periods as short as every minute.”
To further support event-driven updates as soon as they are made across multiple data sources, Attunity can take changes and push them to an ESB, which in turn can share it with multiple or remote data stores, he added.
“Increasingly, CDC is a cost-effective solution to this problem and gives IT a way to present users with more access to more data in less time. Our agreement with Microsoft now makes that choice even easier for companies,” he said.
Attunity has won several awards for its Attunity SQL Server-CDC for SSIS data replication software, including being recognized in the Best BI/Reporting product category in SQL Server Magazine.
“Real-time BI has quickly become a common requirement and we enable it with our software delivering significant cost-savings,” added Shimon Alon, Attunity’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
