Insights-driven organizations use data virtualization and data fabric architectures to get value from data quickly and support new business requirements. While many firms use one or the other architecture, some use both to support their digital business initiatives. Data virtualization gives you direct access to transactional systems in real time via a data abstraction layer, while data fabric delivers end-to-end data management capabilities, supporting many more stack components such as data catalog, data preparation, and data modeling. This report for technology architecture professionals explains the differences between the two architectures and illustrates what use cases are often deployed by firms.