Fivetran acquires Teleport Data, solves database replication issues

Fivetran has acquired Teleport Data, and with the acquisition intends to improve reliability, performance and ease of use in the database replication market.

At present, according to Fivetran, when trying to transfer data from a source location to a warehouse, it can be difficult to track changes and ensure data quality and consistency as source location data is constantly changing.

Current solutions such as snapshots, which essentially take a picture of that data from one static point in time, not real-time. Furthermore, log-based change data capture solutions are hard to configure and set up.

Fivetran' Teleport Sync database replication solution is designed to be simple like snapshots, while also delivering performance approaches the speed of log-based systems, while being much less intrusive making access to data easier across the organisation.

According to the company, additional benefits of Teleport Sync include: less database overhead typically associated with logs, timestamp columns to indicate changes, or primary keys on illogical tables; a code-free method to set up historical analysis; the ability to capture all data without highly customised scripts; and improvement on throughput without needing network engineers or extra/load query analysis.

Fivetran states that enterprises and organisations of all sizes are now facing an explosion of data that is often hard to access for insights. As organisations accelerate their digital transformations, particularly as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, new insights from data become critically important.

However, to most quickly and accurately discover them, access to secure database binary log files was required to ship database changes to another target system. This method has proven hard for users to configure, requires specialised security access, and is error-prone.

Fivetran Teleport Sync avoids these challenges completely by moving only the changed data, without requiring access to secure binary log files, the company states.

The new capability will be available later this year.

Fivetran CEO George Fraser says, "We are prioritising the development and acquisition of new replication technologies so that Fivetran is the most robust and easy-to-use data pipeline solution in the market, something that we take very seriously as we continue our mission to make access to data as simple and reliable as electricity.

"I became acquainted with Teleport Data through a dialogue in a Slack community. We were discussing the challenges of data validation, and I was presented with a method that had not been previously considered. It proved to be a very innovative invention and it will serve our customers well.

In addition to Teleport Sync, Fivetran has introduced a number of other database replication enhancements that make centralising data easier for data systems, including history mode, a code-free approach to historical analysis that records every version of each record in the source table to the corresponding table in a destination.

Fivetran also delivers speed improvements, such as throughout the end-to-end replication process, on a continual basis. From data extraction improvements to processing and load optimisations, Fivetran has improved speeds, the company states.