Mendix, a Siemens business and global leader in low-code application development for the enterprise, today announced expanded capabilities for Mendix Data Hub, which transforms how people across the enterprise discover, understand, use, and govern data for software development and other activities. Mendix Data Hub, a data virtualization service, makes enterprise data resources broadly accessible and actionable with drag-and-drop ease, integrating seamlessly into the Mendix low-code application platform.
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Mendix Data Hub is a key component of Mendix’s expanded “all-in-one” low-code platform. By extending the Mendix low-code approach to include data integration, Data Hub enables developers to rapidly build new software solutions that are deeply integrated with core system data. This landmark capability effectively solves what has persistently been one of the most cumbersome and risky aspects of software development.
Mendix is also now the cloud platform at the heart of Xcelerator™, Siemens Digital Industries Software’s integrated portfolio of software and services that speeds the digital transformation cycle. Mendix Data Hub further strengthens the power of Xcelerator, allowing industrial customers to bring both systems and software together in an integrated platform.
“Data is the critical common denominator for solving important business problems,” says Mendix CEO Derek Roos. “The reality is that valuable data resources are often scattered throughout an enterprise, and the people who need to leverage them — business domain experts and developers — may not even know they exist or where they reside. Data Hub is the key that unlocks this goldmine of data so it can be used to boost productivity, streamline operations, and gain real competitive advantage — quickly and easily, without the need for custom integrations. It’s a critical new piece of the landscape, with the potential to drive innovation and agility to levels we’ve never seen before.”
Roos and Mendix CTO Johan den Haan talked extensively about Mendix Data Hub during their joint, live keynote presentation this morning. An on-demand Mendix World: Version 2.0 session, “Democratizing Data Integration for Makers,” goes deeper into the problems Data Hub was created to solve and the benefits this capability delivers to the enterprise.
Building the Value of Data at Every Level of the Organization
Mendix Data Hub enables CIOs and leaders across the enterprise to empower their organizations with valuable data in a way that is trusted, meaningful, and most importantly, actionable. With Data Hub, key activities around connected data are simple and transparent. As with the entire Mendix low-code platform, users at every level, from non-technical domain specialists to experienced developers, can quickly gain proficiency with Data Hub. They can discover and understand trusted data in the Mendix Data Hub Catalog, and then use it via drag and drop as they create applications in both the Mendix Studio and Studio Pro environments.
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“For developers, integration is still messy and time-intensive,” said den Haan. “Finding, accessing, connecting to, and massaging data typically accounts for 30 to 40% of application development time — even for low-code developers. Data Hub removes that friction.”
The Data Hub platform also addresses the pain points of architects, who struggle to balance the competing expectations of self-service access, foolproof security, reliable and fast delivery, standards compliance, and cost savings, amid an ever-growing and non-transparent landscape of disparate systems, including monoliths. The Catalog revolutionizes that experience, making the connected landscape transparent and self-service. External Entities makes it easy for architects to break down monoliths while still enforcing best practices. This opens the connected landscape to safe use and smart growth, making capabilities repeatable and reusable.
Drag-and-Drop Access to a Newly Chartered World of Actionable Data
This release of Mendix Data Hub comprises the following components:
The Mendix Data Hub Catalog is an open, standards-based metadata repository that enables all users — developers and business domain experts alike — to discover and explore data resources throughout their connected ecosystem.
Data Hub Connectors enable enterprises to connect data sources to Data Hub, populating the catalog and making the data available to developers. In addition to data from any Mendix application, the first connectors being made available are an agnostic oData connector, an SAP connector, and connectors to Siemens Teamcenter and Mindsphere.
External Entities present data from remote systems as local to developers, enabling them to drag-and-drop that data quickly and seamlessly into the applications they are creating in Studio and Studio Pro.
Further Realizing Value with Key iPaaS Partners
Mendix users will also benefit from a robust set of partnerships to further extend Data Hub’s capabilities. iPaaS vendors, in particular, provide valuable extensions to Data Hub as they can provide use case-specific data prep and connectivity to additional specialized data sources. Once teams connect Data Hub to iPaaS solutions, this specialized data can – like all data in Data Hub – be searched and used seamlessly by Mendix developers.
One of the first Data Hub partners is eQ Technologic, a leader in Data as a Service (DaaS), whose eQube platform is already widely leveraged by Siemens customers. As part of an expanded strategic partnership with eQ Technologic that Siemens DISW announced today, Data Hub users will have access to over 60 out-of-the-box smart connectors to some of the most common enterprise data systems used by industrial customers. With this extension to Data Hub, customers can now connect their PLM, ERP, ALM, IoT, and OT (operational technology) solutions via eQ’s DaaS platform. Enhanced with eQ, the Mendix low-code development platform and Data Hub enable enterprises to quickly build deeply integrated industrial business solutions that instantly unlock, extend and personalize core data and systems across IT and OT.
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