Get to know data governance tools for the enterprise
Data governance tools can address documentation gaps, data visibility and metadata management. Here are some tools that can help you along your journey.
As companies continue to shift from paper-based processes to the digital world, a data governance framework -- including processes, policies and other procedures -- must be in place to ensure data efficiency and security.
A set of rules around data knowledge and use provides several benefits to end users, including a common understanding of the information and a definition of the types of security policies needed to mitigate compliance and regulation risks.
Several tools can assist with managing information that organizations care about. Data governance tools help address documentation gaps, metadata management and data visibility, and they create a centralized location where companies store data. Here are some products to consider:
IBM
IBM provides several data governance tools for organizations to catalog, collaborate on and document data. Products available include:
Watson Knowledge Catalog, which collects and documents business data;
InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog, which defines and shares policies through a web portal;
and InfoSphere Information Analyzer, which analyzes data sets to determine quality.
These products help tackle challenges that organizations face when data is spread across different systems by standardizing the way businesses document data and policies surrounding it. IBM has also added Watson AI capabilities into some of its data governance components to analyze and provide insights into the collected information and details around staff use.
Alteryx
Data governance tools help address documentation gaps, metadata management and data visibility, and create a centralized location where companies store data.
Alteryx Connect provides a data cataloging tool that helps visually define data that users in an organization use. This data can include customer information, invoices, orders and other elements extracted from an ERP system, sales automation or unstructured files.
Alteryx Connect also offers the ability for users to describe relationships between different data elements, such as how customer profiles are connected to orders and invoices. Metadata management tools are also available through Alteryx Connect, enabling businesses to scan and extract information from servers and different data sources, such as Microsoft SQL Server, Amazon Redshift and Salesforce. This eliminates the need for IT staff and business analysts to manually describe and enter the data.
Datum
The Datum Information Value Management tool is another option for managing critical data. This software -- acquired by Infogix in October 2018 -- enables businesses to connect to all of their data sources to get insights into the volume of data they have. Once the software detects and indexes the data, a global search enables users to find it.
The platform also tackles the need for security and data policies with dashboards that provide activity statuses for content approvals and data usage.
Netwrix
For organizations suffering from file clutter that want to focus on indexing, cataloging and identifying files such as Word documents, PDFs, text files and other forms of unstructured data, one viable solution is a network inspector or file system auditing tool such as Netwrix Auditor.
This software offers a network scanning tool that is capable of auditing file shares to catalog meaningful information such as file permissions, ownership, size name and an assortment of other tags.
