In today’s digital landscape, enterprises face constant pressure to rapidly and cost-effectively launch new digital services that meet high user demands and manage complex data workflows. 

Achieving these goals requires addressing two critical challenges: 

• Design-time efficiency: the ability to develop and deploy services quickly 
• Runtime performance: ensuring that those services deliver seamless, high-speed experiences under any load

Fast, reliable data access is essential — not only to enable high-speed performance, but also to accelerate time to value through quick deployment and development cycles. Equally important is the flexibility to deliver low-code services and customization capabilities, empowering teams to adapt quickly to changing requirements. However, these objectives are not easy to achieve, especially when data must be accessed across diverse, siloed systems.

In this post we’ll explore three key ways to efficiently deliver data that powers high-performance applications, each offering unique benefits to support speed, adaptability, and performance at scale.

Ultra-High Performance with Real-Time Data Updates

High-performance applications rely on ultra-low-latency data access to deliver real-time responsiveness, especially during peak usage. Traditional databases can struggle to meet these demands, particularly when applications require instantaneous results to support processes such as real-time recommendations, live transaction processing, and time-sensitive alerts. The need for constant, fresh data compounds this challenge of ensuring that applications can keep up with rapid workloads across large user bases without performance degradation.

The Solution

Achieving ultra-high performance with real-time data access involves leveraging in-memory compute and ultra-low-latency data storage technologies. By processing data directly in-memory, applications can avoid the delays typically associated with disk-based systems, enabling sub-second data retrieval and updates. Continuous, automated data updates ensure that applications always have access to fresh, accurate information—even during peak demand periods. 

These technologies support thousands of transactions per second, ensuring seamless user experiences and optimal performance under any load. For example, during high-traffic events like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, when systems are required to handle massive surges in activity, this approach guarantees that applications can manage peak workloads without compromising speed or reliability.

Unified Data Access Across Multiple Sources for Consistency and Agility

Modern applications often require data from a variety of sources—CRMs, ERPs, legacy systems, real-time feeds, and more. However, consolidating and synchronizing data from these diverse systems into a single, cohesive view can be challenging, especially when systems don’t communicate effectively or use incompatible data formats. Without a centralized and consistent data access strategy, organizations encounter delays during service development and inconsistencies at runtime. These issues not only slow down workflows but also complicate real-time decision-making, reducing the agility and responsiveness of applications.

The Solution

A robust data integration framework creates a single, unified view of data across multiple sources, providing consistency and enhancing agility. By centralizing data access through this framework, applications can retrieve all relevant data from one source, minimizing the need to query disparate backend systems individually. This not only reduces strain on those systems but also enables applications to respond quickly to changing data in real time. With consistently updated, consolidated data, teams can deliver cohesive services faster, ensuring that all necessary information is readily available to support responsive and adaptive operations.

Accelerating Time to Value with Flexible, Low-Code Data Service Deployment

Delivering data to high-performance applications isn’t just about speed and consistency—it’s also about flexibility in the manner in which data is made available. In many cases, teams need to create or modify data services quickly to meet changing requirements or launch new features. However, traditional development can be time-intensive, requiring extensive coding, testing, and deployment steps that slow down innovation.

The Solution

Flexible, low-code development tools allow organizations to rapidly build and modify data services, reducing dependency on lengthy coding processes. With low-code capabilities, teams can create simple services through intuitive interfaces, while full-code options enable customization for complex logic and calculations. Balancing low-code and full-code development empowers teams with varying skill sets to work on digital services, significantly speeding up deployment times and enabling faster responses to business needs. This flexibility drastically reduces time to value, helping organizations launch services in months rather than years, enabling faster time to market and adaptability for various business needs.

This solution should also support both REST and GraphQL services, making it easy to expose data and create custom solutions for diverse use cases. Teams can deploy real-time data services quickly — whether through a few clicks for simple REST or GraphQL services or by writing complex business logic that the platform processes efficiently.  

When these capabilities are packed as an off-the-shelf platform, this comprehensive solution simplifies costs and skill requirements for long-term projects, enabling faster time to market and adaptability for various business needs.

The FUTURE: Fast Development & Deployment of Digital Services

As enterprises adopt new technologies such as GenAI, they need high-performance data solutions that not only provide speed and reliability but also enable rapid adaptation to evolving business requirements. GigaSpaces’ Smart DIH (Digital Integration Hub) platform offers  a well-integrated, off-the-shelf solution that  enables customers to launch new digital services within weeks, accelerating development and deployment cycles. With its combination of ultra-high performance, real-time data updates, and unified data access, Smart DIH ensures consistent, rapid data availability across diverse sources. 

The platform allows teams to use low-code interfaces for quick service creation, or full-code options for more complex logic, making it adaptable for a range of use cases and skill levels. By unifying data and offering both REST and GraphQL service capabilities, Smart DIH empowers organizations to deliver real-time digital services efficiently, meeting business needs with speed, agility, and minimal complexity. This comprehensive approach positions Smart DIH as the future of fast, flexible, and reliable digital services.

Building on our expertise in real-time data consolidation and accessibility, we now support generative AI use cases that empower all types of users with various skill levels to seamlessly query and leverage enterprise data using natural language. This evolution unlocks new possibilities for innovation, enabling businesses to deliver reliable, adaptive, and future-ready digital services.