Unlocking the Value of Cloud Data Governance: The Essential Role of Azure Purview in Business Transformation

Organizations need robust data governance practices to ensure data security, compliance, and easy access. With the increasing adoption of cloud computing, more data is stored, processed, and shared in the cloud, which leads to industry challenges:

• Users are becoming increasingly disillusioned with data products and are losing trust, as without accurate lineage, there is no proof that they are what they claim to be.
• Users are unable to trace data origin and flow or improve its quality. As a result, lineage absence leads to ongoing data quality issues.
• Data privacy compliance is just one of the many regulatory compliance statutes that impact businesses in every sector. Auditors need proof of data lineage to ensure users handle data correctly.
• There is inefficiency in root cause analysis for any issue or problem ticket.

Data lineage is the process of tracking data movement and transformation from its source to its destination, including any transformations along the way. Microsoft Purview provides a unified data governance solution to manage and govern your on-premises, multi-cloud, and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) data.

This blog will cover all the aspects of data management that can help businesses make informed decisions, improve operations, and maintain compliance with regulations. So, let’s dive into the world of data management and explore this significant topic together.

1. Data Governance

Data governance refers to the overall management of an organization’s data availability, usability, integrity, and security. It involves defining policies and procedures for data management, ensuring compliance with regulations, and establishing roles and responsibilities for data-related tasks. Effective data governance is essential for organizations to make informed decisions based on accurate and reliable data. It ensures that data is traceable, consistent, and trustworthy to avoid misuse.

Magnitude of Data Governance

A recent report by Verified Market Research projected that by 2028 there would be a spike of 21.89% for data governance, driven by increased compliance and privacy requirements. Each industry is expected to invest a lot from 2020 to 2027 since all industries have their data spread across multiple cloud vendors, service providers, and types of data, and they want to get more insight from it.

2. Data Lineage

Data lineage is a key component of data governance as it provides a clear understanding of the origin, movement, and transformation of data within an organization. Data Lineage is a graphical representation that details where the data originated, how it has changed, and its ultimate destination within the data pipeline. With the increasing adoption of multiple cloud technologies, it’s becoming more challenging to maintain visibility and control over data lineage, making it crucial for organizations to implement robust data governance strategies that entail a good lineage strategy.

Data lineage has different types that are classified based on how it is generated, who is the intended user of the lineage, and how the generated data lineage is documented.

Design Lineage: Focuses on identifying the data sources and flows that result in a given data state.

Business Lineage: Describes the origins and evolution of business information data.

Operational Lineage: Describes how data is moved and transformed based on which technical operations occur.

A customer conducted 704 data lineage searches in one day. Each search saves at least 1/2 hour on manual mapping (usually, it’s about six hours!), so we’re talking about a savings of at least 352 hours!

3. Azure Purview

Azure Purview provides a unified data governance solution to help manage and govern clients’ on-premises, multi-cloud, and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) data. Azure Purview is a cloud-based data governance service that enables organizations to discover, understand, and manage their data assets across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Its popularity can be attributed to its ability to provide a unified view of an organization’s data landscape, streamline compliance efforts, and enhance collaboration between business and IT teams. Additionally, Azure Purview offers advanced capabilities such as automated data classification, lineage tracking, and sensitive data.

Some salient features include:

• Automating and managing metadata from hybrid sources.
• Classifying data using built-in and custom classifiers and Microsoft Information Protection sensitivity labels.
• Labeling sensitive data consistently across SQL Server, Azure, Microsoft 365, and Power BI.
• Easily integrating all your data catalogs and systems using Apache Atlas APIs.

Use Case of Azure Purview:

Hexaware helped an insurance company create a Custom Lineage mapping between Azure Analysis Services & Microsoft Purview Service.

A specialty insurer in the London market approached us to modernize their data management process; they had a legacy BA system and barrels. The company wanted to update its data management system and improve data security but faced the following challenges:

• Data silos across multiple systems
• Lack of self-service capability for businesses to view and analyze data for insights
• Data quality issues in reporting

Hexaware’s Innovative Solution:

Hexaware created a custom lineage using ApacheAtlas. We developed a Data Lake and Analytics platform on Azure Cloud using Azure Synapse Analytics. Azure Purview was designed for the implementation of Data Governance in the system. Microsoft Purview developed the data lineage between Synapse analytics and target systems from the source.

Using PyApacheAtlas library, we developed a code that helps build custom lineages. This solution allowed the architects to build custom lineages for non-supported (push lineage from Synapse Analytics to purview) activities (notebooks, stored procedures, UDF) of Synapse Analytics.

Key Business Benefits:

• 40% faster time to market
• Eliminated manual data lineage and reduced TCO by 25%
• Enabled data lineage information from source to data mart for the analytics team to build ML models

4. Custom Data Lineage with Apache Atlas

Apache Atlas framework is an extensible set of core foundational governance services, enabling enterprises to meet their compliance requirements effectively and efficiently. It provides open metadata management and governance services under one or more contributor license agreements with the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). Organizations can easily discover, classify, and govern their data assets to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and improve data quality.

PyApacheAtlas lets you work with the Azure Purview and Apache Atlas APIs in a Pythonic way – supporting bulk loading, custom lineage, custom type definition, and more from an SDK and Excel templates integration.

To extend the capability of Azure Purview to the data sources for which there is no native connector available, Purview API comes in handy. With secure API calls, we can create entities in the Purview data plane and draw relationships between them, thereby creating a graphical representation programmatically.

Our Partnership

Driven by the common goal of helping customers achieve digital transformation, Hexaware and Microsoft have created a solid, strategic partnership. This strategic global alliance involves co-developing solutions and building capabilities relevant to industries to help our clients solve critical business challenges in an accelerated, smarter, and cost-effective manner. With the help of Azure, we initiate app innovation, infra modernization, and data estate.

Summary

We have learned the best practices on data governance and Custom Lineage mapping between Azure Analysis Services & Microsoft Purview Service. As a result, you can create a robust data governance process, build effective data lineage, and help companies meet their compliance obligations.

Get in touch with our team of Azure experts to know how you can integrate Azure Purview with your organization. For more information, contact us at marketing@hexaware.com