Modern enterprises are operating in the “wild west” when it comes to data. Applying controls consistently across today’s distributed data architectures is critical to successful digital transformation. The complexity of hybrid and multi-cloud environments, fragmentation of data supply chains, and confusion over who should be responsible for managing data all add up to one thing: chaos.
This chaos prevents organizations from gaining total visibility and control over data ecosystems. The solution is to establish a data “mission control” to give organizations end-to-end visibility while ensuring line of business teams can extract value from data.
Confusion Reigns Without Data Governance
First, we need to understand the issue of governance. New global research from StreamSets found that 54% of data leaders and practitioners say modern infrastructures that span on-premises and multiple cloud environments, combined with data decentralization between line of business teams, has created a data “wild west.” And 57% say this fragmentation in the data supply chain has made it harder to understand, govern, and manage data.
When organizations can’t easily understand, govern and manage data, they open themselves to risk. In fact, the same study finds that:
- 44% of organizations can’t maintain governance or automate policy controls
- 42% can’t enforce consistent security controls
- 48% can’t see when data is being used in multiple systems
- Over half can’t integrate data pipelines with a data catalog (54%) or data fabric (57%)
All of these challenges come when there is a lack of centralized guardrails. Without guardrails, anyone can create datasets and pipelines without IT or data teams being notified. Almost all (95%) of data leaders and practitioners say this creates problems and business risks.
Cutting Through the Chaos
Organizations are caught between a rock and a hard place. They want to help data users unleash their creativity and get value from data. But they need to protect the enterprise from risk.
A balance must be struck between control and data freedom. This is where consistent governance has a critical role to play. With the right guardrails, business users can “self-serve” data and create new pipelines, without exposing the organization to risk. In fact, 80% of data leaders and practitioners want to enable such a self-service data model.
So how do we get there? Organizations must establish a centralized management console that can act as a data “mission control”. This will allow them to see and manage the entire enterprise data landscape, spanning cloud and on-premises systems. A centralized console delivers deep visibility into pipelines, enabling organizations to apply governance and security controls consistently so that data is created, processed, and distributed according to policy. In so doing, it will provide guardrails to manage risk as LoB users explore new ways to drive innovation and growth.
Without this kind of mission control managing data pipelines, organizations will be sitting on a ticking time bomb of governance risk.
Check out our research to learn more about data governance and the benefits for LoB users.
The post A Ticking Time Bomb: Why Organizations Need To Regain Control of Their Data Pipelines appeared first on StreamSets.
