Talented data scientists don’t come cheap; if a company serious about monetizing data is fortunate enough to land one, it had better wring all it can from them. Data-collection and analytics tools that sweep data from here and yonder into a visible whole can help. Instead of having analysts toil away on low- and mid-level grunt work, they do it for them so they can focus on high-level, creative value-adds.

Data tools should allow professionals to execute plays with the speed they’ve come to expect from consumer tech, according to Sue Waite (pictured), director of global Center of Excellence for database and data management at SAP SE. “Everybody looks at their phone when we make a deposit; we expect to see that deposit instantaneously. The business needs to operate just as instantaneously,” she said.

Waite spoke with Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor), principal at The CTO Advisor, during the SAP Sapphire Now event in Orlando, Florida. They discussed SAP’s latest moves in big data and how to get the most from data analysts. (* Disclosure below.)

Data Hub provides single umbrella for data

Being able to view and combine and analyze data from many different sources is key to holistic data intelligence. Unfortunately, moving large amounts of data around is anything but snappy. An umbrella tool that allows users a single point from which to view disparate data is a much faster a route, according to Waite. SAP’s Data Hub aims to provide this with a single umbrella for data from various databases.

SAP developed Data Hub to put a whole bunch of eyes on data in various, spread-out places. It features data crawlers that can reach out to a system and collect metadata about the files it contains. They can actually preview their contents within tables.

“That’s so powerful for the data analysts, because they no longer have to go literally crack open a file to look at the content. It’s at their fingertips,” Waite explained.

This type of technology can save a lot of time and legwork for data analysts, she added. One SAP customer in manufacturing thought that their data analytics team was tip-top and could manage without it. “They literally came back to us six months later and said, ‘It’s a whole lot more work than we ever expected it would be.'”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the SAP Sapphire Now event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for SAP Sapphire Now. Neither NetApp Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE