Recently Microsoft announced the general availability (GA) of Azure Purview, its data governance solution in the cloud. It provides customers with a unified data governance solution for on-premises, cloud, and app-based systems. The GA release is a follow-up from its public preview release almost a year ago.
Azure Purview offers customers both management and cataloging of data paired with governance, revealing whether enterprise data is secure and compliant. It consists of three main components:
- Data Catalog – a data search tool with filters based on lenses like glossary terms, classifications, sensitivity labels, and more.
- Data Map – a feature that captures metadata about enterprise data present in analytics and operations systems on-premises and cloud.
- Data Governance – a component that provides users with a bird's-eye view of a company's data landscape, enabling data officers to efficiently govern data use. This view allows for critical insights such as data distribution across environments, how data is moving, and where sensitive data is stored.
The service integrates with many Microsoft products and services, both in the cloud and on-premises, like Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure SQL, and SQL Server. Furthermore, it also can connect non-Microsoft products and services, like Amazon Web Services' S3 storage service, Snowflake, and Oracle Database. With the GA release, the service now supports 20-plus source types.
Source: https://github.com/Azure/Azure-Purview-Starter-Kit/blob/main/README.md
During the recent pandemic, more companies embraced the digital transformation, and more data resides in the cloud and on-premises in different sources. Hence data governance becomes more challenging. For example, Rohan Kumar, corporate vice-president, Azure Data at Microsoft, stated in an Azure blog post:
The need for a comprehensive data management and data governance service has never been stronger. That is why we built Azure Purview, a unified data governance solution that helps organizations achieve a complete understanding of their data regardless of if it's housed on-premises in services like SQL Server and Oracle, in different clouds like Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3, or in SaaS applications like Salesforce.
In addition, Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president at Constellation Research Inc., told InfoQ:
Security and Governance remain top concerns for Enterprises to move to the cloud. So it is good to see a significant cloud player focus on Governance, which Microsoft has done with Purview. The exciting development will be to see how quick customer uptake is and if Microsoft can lure some enterprises to clue the first time.
Currently, Azure Purview is available in several Azure regions such as East US, West- and North Europe, Australia East, and Southeast Asia, with more regions to come. Pricing of the service is available on the pricing page and guidance through MS Learn modules and documentation.
