Effective data governance in the cloud has become vital for enterprises in an increasingly data-driven world, according to Solidatus principal data architect Peter Ferguson.
Previously, data sovereignty and cross-border data movements were not concerns that typically would have bothered an on-premises installations outside of multinational enterprises, Ferguson says in a Solidatus blog post on adopting the correct data lineage approach.
“Traditional, manual, spreadsheet-driven data governance processes aren’t up to the task.”
Good data management has been transformed radically by the arrival of cloud technology, he says.
Ferguson suggests that enterprises should take a look at the Cloud Data Management Capabilities (CDMC) framework to review best practice in the first instance around governance and accountability, cataloguing, accessibility, protection, data lifecycle and architectures.
“It lays out how the implementation and maintenance of cloud storage may best be achieved,” he writes.
“This is one of the most significant and comprehensive analyses of cloud data management ever compiled. A holistic approach to the many and varied challenges posed by cloud adoption has not been attempted before. “
The framework rests on six components, containing 14 major capabilities, further divided into 37 sub-capabilities — to which Ferguson himself contributed as a practitioner. Specialist working groups were also set up to deal with certain areas, including data lineage.
Organisations typically must not only maintain data while complying with ever-growing legislative and regulatory requirements but when moving some or all of their data to the cloud.
“You must establish, understand and observe jurisdictional requirements. This is just one example of how vital a comprehensive data catalogue is to successful cloud adoption,” he says.
Without understanding the data put into the cloud, including the metadata to describe those data assets fully, controlling and managing that data becomes impossible.
Meanwhile multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments also present additional challenges for keeping data lineage accurately recorded and up to date, Ferguson adds.
“Unsurprisingly, automation is a major theme throughout,” he says.
