Enterprises far and wide are consuming the significant innovation in the data platform marketplace. We have seen more innovation in data platforms in the past 3 years than in the prior 30 years. The innovation has come from expected (database management systems) and unexpected (enhanced flat-file systems and hash tables in the form of Hadoop and NoSQL systems) areas.

The new requirements enterprises have for their data is unparalleled levels of performance, increased agility and putting in place systems that scale with the workload - the levels of which are more difficult than ever to predict.

Data is seldom confined to one system. Architects may choose to minimize redundancy and utilize data virtualization, but undoubtedly many data elements will flow throughout the architecture, sometimes as-is and sometimes transformed for its new purpose. Being skillful in data integration allows an enterprise to take advantage of the data platform innovations by putting workloads in their absolute best platform. Data integration truly holds the modern enterprise together.

The goal of this paper is to highlight data integration challenges, the choices involved in tool selection, and reasons why Talend Enterprise Data Integration should be considered for your next data integration project.