A decade ago, several reporting tools were available in the market but were too complicated for people to use it. Also, only some technical resources received access to data sources to create reports for people who require it. Data security, governance, and organizing were controllable.
With the advancement in technology, reporting tools available became widely available to all who needs it and is quite easy to use. Data driven masses empower people with access to self-service unprecedented data sources.
Moreover, the simultaneous growth of digitization, IoT, cloud apps, etc. have a transformation process which increase data sources’ availability exponentially. Apart from these, privacy regulation is also evolving, which makes it progressively Data-driven for companies to govern and secure their data effectively. This is why buying a product which would suit the needs of a business has become essential these days.
Such solutions are required for addressing data management in modern times. It was considered can have in yester years; however, times changed and it has become a must have product in business as numerous data regulation compliance along with GDPR enforcement have come into the scene. Violating any rules might lead to hefty penalties that can be in millions.
Apart from all of these, what one should keep in mind is that to survive in a competing business world it is necessary to keep up with technology. Without being efficient, a business might crumble within months. Hence, to keep a business running swiftly, more people are opting for such products.
Now let’s have a look at the aspects as how you can select the best product for your business in details!
How to choose the best product for your business?
When it comes to selecting the correct data catalog for business, one will come across numerous options which resembles to such products but are unable to fulfill standard requirements. Moreover, individuals should be aware of solutions which should be integrated in such a product. Hence, below are mentioned characteristics which should be present in an ideal catalog.
Take a look!
Intelligent and automatic population of tag
Such an item scans as well as loads metadata which is collected from thousands of data sources; hence, automation in this case becomes a necessity. Moreover, several remarkable products utilized AI (artificial intelligence) and also machine learning techniques for efficiently profiling, populating, and tagging metadata about data’s quality.
Crowd source reviews and ratings
An excellent catalog should be able to support data sources’ ratings, provide information, adding comments, etc. about various data sets to have a proper context.
Crowd sourced tags along with feedback from machine learning aspect
This type of software or product should allow humans to review it and automatically populated tags management.Catalogs which are powered by AI must apply various machine learning aspects that that will help in learning automatically from several human content. In addition, it should improve automated tagging’s accuracy over time.
Enterprise scalability
Opting for a product that is developed on technology of big data such as cloud infrastructure is ideal for providing services throughout an organization. Such catalogs should be able to handle a wide range of types when it comes to data source like unstructured, semi-structure, relational, etc. which can reside anywhere such as cloud, on-premises, hybrid, etc. Also, it should be able to cope up with a company’s increasing data landscape.
Ensuring ability for metadata freshness and tagging
Businesses should always keep a current data catalog and for this incremental and new scans should keep updating metadata which already exists. This is primarily crucial when it comes to any sensitive data as well as data which is subjected to various regulatory and compliance policies.
Search options
Using a catalog which utilizes search engines which are proven to be balance aids all of the users to search such a catalog for making decisions using data available.
Integrating catalog with different tools through open APIs
An excellent catalog will be easy to integrate with present business glossaries, business applications’ line, and business intelligence data discovery tools, and data prep with its open APIs’ system.
Utilizing it as a platform
New initiatives which are taken on data governance, security, consent, and data are rationalizing management applications require building it on top of remarkable catalogs for adapting to various data legislation changes. Hence, when opting for one, a company should have knowledge about whether its catalog vendor can help with these kinds of usage cases.
Data protection
For protecting and governing sensitive data, one should opt for catalogs which support granular role-based data security and data masking.
Data lineage
When choosing a catalog, it must provide a complete overview of data’s origination as well as where it is being send or sent to. For addressing standard gaps on data lineage, a catalog must automatically discover and also suggest any missing lineage in between data sates for easily making an entry manually for the missing lineage chains.
So, now that you are aware of why you need to get a data catalog for your business. All you need to remember is above-mentioned points to get the best one in the market that would fulfill all of your requirements.