Data virtualization enables businesses to access, manage, integrate, and aggregate data from disparate sources independent from its physical location or format in real-time. It breaks free from the requirement of knowing every technical detail of the data and ultimately aggregates data into one single 'view', without the need to move data into a central storage. Data virtualization is critical to a modern data strategy as it helps organizations exploit their data assets more effectively, achieve faster time-to-solution, flexibility and simplicity, cost-effectiveness, consistent and secure data governance, and addresses challenges such as delivering self-service capabilities for data users, creating time efficiency in data management, achieving trusted data quality. The ideal solution is to combine data virtualization with other technologies like caching, materialization, and query optimization to deliver a breakthrough in flexibility and performance. Modern data architectures integrate these elements to provide a unified view of the organization's data landscape, enabling real-time functionality, and providing instant access to a 360-degree view of customers, products, and processes.