Governing Unstructured Data Gets Easier
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I first discussed Varonis on this blog last August in Governing Unstructured Data.
Varonis is a very interesting software company whose flagship product, the Varonis® Data Governance Suite, focuses on governing unstructured information.
Unstructured data (i.e. data that’s not stored in a structured form such as a database and which either doesn’t have a data model or has one that is not easily readable by a computer) accounts for as much as 80% of all business information. So governing and securing it properly is a huge challenge that is only made harder by the predicted annual growth rate of more than 60%, roughly three times faster than the growth rate for structured data.
And the security threat environment is getting more challenging, with examples like Heartland Payment Systems, a large credit card processing company, which was breached in an attack in late 2008 that may have compromised more than 100 million accounts.
And serious data breach incidents are increasing, according to a study by Enterprise Strategy Group, up from 30% of large organizations (1,000 or more employees) in 2005-2007, to 56% of large organizations in 2008.
So I was interested when Varonis let me know recently they’ve released version 4.0, a major new release of Varonis DatAdvantage and Varonis DataPrivilege. The increased automation and integration means that a business can get up and running with a framework for managing, protecting and monitoring their unstructured data within hours. The product can recommend and enforce permission revocations, taking the guesswork out of assigning and revoking permissions so companies can start controlling access with consistency and regularity.
What do you think? Are you including unstructured data in the scope of your efforts to govern, manage and secure your enterprise’s information? Please let us know by commenting here or on the MDM Community.
Top 5 Reasons Not To Master Your Data in SAP ERP
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We had a very successful webinar on Feb. 5th with Siperian, on the “Top 5 Reasons Not To Master Your Data in SAP ERP”.
A lot of organizations use SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for their transaction processing, but struggle to manage their non-transactional (or master) data on customers, products, suppliers, etc.
These types of data typically require a separate Master Data Management (MDM) system – to streamline business processes, reduce costs, and increase revenue by creating a single view of the customer, product, or supplier.
To view the replay, please click here.
MDM and Operational Business Intelligence
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Editor’s Note: Another in the series of “MDM and …” guest posts by Joan Lawson, an enterprise architect who I’ve known since 2003.
For more details on Joan, please see her LinkedIn profile — Dan Power
There’s been a resurgence lately of writing about Operational Business Intelligence.
It’s a valuable concept. Operational BI gives people in the enterprise an up-to-date view of performance against the key metrics that drive the success of the organization, so they’re better informed and can more readily determine corrective actions when needed.
All the vendors and analysts identify success criteria to include Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) engines, business rules, and high end presentation capabilities.
But they’re missing the #1 criteria for success… high quality master data.
In Operational BI, the real time transactional data will most likely be sourced from two or more business applications.
The historical source of data, for comparison’s sake, can be the data warehouse.
But for the master data, where is the “source of truth”? If you’re going to fast track your business monitoring, be sure to include an architecture for real-time master data management to provide top quality dimensional data.
Please let us know your thoughts by commenting here or on the MDM Community on your experiences in using MDM in concert with Operational Business Intelligence.
Upcoming Webinar with Siperian
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Loraine Lawson from ITBusinessEdge has a good article on our upcoming webinar sponsored by Siperian.
She pointed out that Andrew White of Gartner thought the webinar raises some good questions in his recent blog article.
Andrew White said “ERP might be a good place to master data. The real question for the user is this: where is the right source of master data for you?”
Andrew is on the right track. In the webinar, we’ll outline the differences between SAP ERP and Siperian MDM, and when it makes sense to have a separate MDM hub.
I think companies should evaluate whether their ERP system is helping them solve business problems involving master data – or causing them.
To register for the webinar, please click here.
