Microsoft

Maximizing Business Value and Efficiency with Microsoft Purview: A Unified Data Governance Solution

Publish Date: July 10, 2023

Data and data insights have become the mainstay of all business decisions, and enterprises are constantly looking for ways to maximize the value of their data pools. There is a growing need to develop new methods to identify, monitor, and manage business-critical information to meet this expectation. An organization that needs a holistic understanding of its data estate will find it increasingly challenging to adapt to evolving market and regulatory conditions.

Identifying and tracking data hidden in spreadsheets and dispersed folders is a feat that has yet to be achieved. A McKinsey survey revealed that organizations spend around 30% of their time on non-value-added tasks due to poor data availability and quality. It results in a severe loss of productivity. Thankfully, an antidote to such issues is readily available.

Formerly known as Azure Preview, Microsoft Purview is a unified data governance solution to organize and govern data that may be stored on-premises or in multi-cloud and SaaS environments. It seamlessly combines Azure Purview and Microsoft 365 compliance solutions and services into a single brand. It helps build an up-to-date holistic chart of the data landscape with automated data discovery, thoughtful data classification, and end-to-end data stocking.

Maximizing Value of Data with Microsoft Purview

Using Microsoft Purview, data consumers can access valuable and reliable details for critical business decisions. The key features that make Microsoft Purview a worthwhile investment for enterprises include:

Effective governance with an integrated map showing data assets and how they are interrelated
Insights into the location and movement of sensitive data across the entire data estate
Glossary with technical and business terms to help in data discovery
In-place data sharing in near real-time and easy provisioning of data access

As it creates a unified map of records available across the entire data estate, Microsoft Purview sets up the foundation of efficient data governance and usage by automating and handling metadata from hybrid sources. It also categorizes data via built-in and customized classifiers and Microsoft Information Protection sensitivity labels. All sensitive data is labeled consistently across SQL Server, Azure, Microsoft 365, and Power BI. In addition, it consolidates all data catalogs and systems using Apache Atlas APIs.

Once users find the relevant data asset, the data lineage becomes visible. Data lineage is primarily defined as the lifecycle that covers data origin, its movement over time, and the transformations across the data estate.

Microsoft Purview’s users can delve into the origin of their data through interactive visualization. Such features give data analysts and engineers the inputs they need for business intelligence, AI, and machine learning algorithms. When there is no facility to trace a data asset visually, it can take a lot of time to trace the root cause of issues triggered by upstream data pipelines managed by other teams in an organization.

With its enterprise-grade business glossary, Microsoft Purview eliminates the need for Excel data dictionaries and keeps data easily searchable while maximizing its business value. The glossary also allows terms to be categorized and comprehended in various contexts. For example, a customer may be referred to as a buyer, purchaser, or client. Such words can then be mapped to assets such as a database, tables, or columns.

Microsoft Purview Data Estate Insights lets users learn in-depth about their data management aspects and view its health metrics throughout the hybrid data landscape. It enables them to check the audit trails of their data categorized by sensitivity and business relevance. The administrators also receive status updates on the successful execution, failure, and cancellation of scans. Furthermore, they can gain insights to input or restructure glossary terms for efficient search outcomes. Where sensitive information is involved, the compliance risk evaluation is simple across all transactional and operational data sources.

Organizations using Microsoft Purview can effortlessly share data without any duplication and keep data sharing centralized. They also get the support of Azure Data Lake Storage (ADSL Gen2) and Blob Storage. When they employ Microsoft Purview, it is easy for data owners and engineers to give others access to the right data. Support for resource groups, subscriptions, Azure SQL DB, and SQL Server 2022 is also available.

Built-in security and compliance

Microsoft’s more than $1 billion investment in cyber-security research and tools has made Purview an optimally secure data governance solution. Over 3500 professionals work to keep its integrity and privacy consistent. Microsoft Purview has also received several industry certifications from ISO/IEC, CSA/CCM, ITAR, CJIS, HIPAA, and IRS 1075. Businesses of all sizes have adopted it to protect their sensitive data across clouds, apps, and devices.

It offers organizations the tools to create a comprehensive map of their data estate, including data classification and end-to-end lineage. Identifying where sensitive data is stored within the estate helps create a secure environment for data consumers to access valuable data. It also allows for generating crucial insights about how their data is stored and used, aiding in making informed data-related decisions.

Cloud Data Management

One of the key benefits of Microsoft Purview is its ability to help organizations manage and oversee their cloud data more effectively. Due to the sheer volume of data stored in the cloud, it can be challenging to track and manage it all effectively. However, Purview helps overcome this issue by finding and labeling the data, which can be presented on the overview page. This page gives administrators a clear and concise understanding of their organization’s data. It enables them to evaluate potential risks and implement counter-measures to ensure the data remains secure and compliant with data regulations. Purview is not just limited to cloud data. It can also analyze data on on-premises or hybrid environments by setting up connectors. This means you can better secure and monitor your organization’s data, regardless of where it’s stored.

Deploying Microsoft Purview with YASH

Microsoft Purview has helped organizations to innovate their data discovery and governance methods even as the volume and variety of data increase at unprecedented rates. It also addresses the problem of handling data hosted across locations. It enables businesses to know precisely what data they are tracking, where it is rooted, how secure it is, and how it can be accessed.

As a trusted service provider for Microsoft’s products and solutions, YASH has the data experts you need to configure Purview for your organization. We help you get strategic insights into your data landscape and leverage the tool’s curation features to automate and tag data assets for a seamless processing experience.

To know more about Microsoft Purview and consult us for its installation, write to us at info@yash.com