Key insights

• Microsoft Purview offers a comprehensive suite of solutions for data governance, security, and management across various environments. It includes features like the Unified Catalog, which helps in curating and governing data assets effectively.


• Data Products within Microsoft Purview are designed to treat data as a managed asset, enhancing its quality, accessibility, and reuse. This approach supports the concept of Data as a Product, where application teams take responsibility for their data.


• The advantages of using Microsoft Purview Data Products include improved data governance through clear policies, enhanced data accessibility promoting democratization, cost efficiency with a new pay-as-you-go pricing model, and advanced data quality monitoring.


• The core elements of this technology are the Unified Catalog for managing and governing data assets, the linkage of critical data elements to governance concepts, and the use of Data Processing Units (DGPUs) for compute-heavy tasks like ensuring data quality.


• The recent developments in Microsoft Purview include a new pricing model introduced in 2025 that charges based on usage, enhanced catalog management with features like glossary term linking and duplicate detection, and improvements in data observability for better metadata management.


• Data Mesh Approach: To prevent issues related to traditional waterfall approaches in data integration, the concept of treating data as a product is adopted. This ensures that application owners manage their own domain's analytical consumption needs while maintaining high standards of discoverability, security, interoperability, and value.

Level-Up Your Data Strategy with Microsoft Purview Data Products

In today's data-driven world, organizations continuously seek ways to optimize their data strategies. Microsoft Purview offers a robust solution through its data governance and data products, helping companies to better manage and leverage their data assets. This technology is designed to enhance data governance, security, and compliance, providing a unified platform for data management.

Understanding Microsoft Purview

Microsoft Purview is a comprehensive suite of solutions focused on securing, governing, and managing data across various environments. It integrates data governance and security capabilities, making it easier for organizations to manage their data assets effectively. The platform includes features like the **Unified Catalog**, which allows data stewards to curate and govern their data estate while providing consumers with accessible insights. Data products within Microsoft Purview are designed to organize, manage, and utilize data more efficiently. They enable organizations to treat data as a managed asset, similar to traditional products, thereby enhancing data quality, accessibility, and reuse across different business domains. Consequently, this approach helps in creating a more structured and efficient data management process.

Advantages of Microsoft Purview Data Products

The use of Microsoft Purview Data Products offers several advantages. Firstly, **Improved Data Governance** is achieved by organizing data into manageable products, allowing organizations to enhance governance through clear policies and regulations, ensuring data is accurate, secure, and compliant. This leads to a more streamlined and effective data strategy. Additionally, **Enhanced Data Accessibility** is a key benefit. Data products make data more discoverable and accessible to users across the organization, promoting data democratization and collaboration. This accessibility empowers teams to make data-driven decisions more efficiently. Moreover, the introduction of a new **Cost Efficiency** model, specifically the pay-as-you-go pricing, allows businesses to scale their data governance efforts based on actual usage, reducing unnecessary costs. This model offers flexibility and ensures that resources are allocated efficiently. Furthermore, **Advanced Data Quality and Health** is maintained through features like data quality rules and data health monitoring. These capabilities ensure that data used within the organization is reliable and of high quality, fostering trust and confidence in data-driven initiatives.

The Basics of Microsoft Purview Technology

At its core, Microsoft Purview Data Products rely on several foundational elements. The **Unified Catalog** is central to managing and governing data assets. It allows data stewards to curate data products and apply governance policies effectively, ensuring that data is organized and easily accessible. **Data Governance Concepts** are integral to this technology, linking critical data elements (CDEs) and data products to governance concepts. This linkage enables organizations to manage data assets more systematically, ensuring compliance and security. Furthermore, **Data Processing Units (DGPUs)** are utilized for compute-heavy tasks such as data quality and health management. These units provide a flexible way to manage data processing costs, ensuring that resources are used efficiently without compromising on performance.

New Developments in Microsoft Purview

Several recent developments highlight the evolution of Microsoft Purview Data Products. The introduction of a **New Pricing Model** as of January 6, 2025, marks a significant change. This model charges based on the number of unique governed assets and data governance processing units used, offering greater flexibility and cost control. This development underscores Microsoft's commitment to providing scalable and cost-effective solutions. Additionally, **Enhanced Catalog Management** features are being introduced. These include the ability to link glossary terms to physical and logical concepts, define custom attributes for business concepts, and detect duplicate concepts. These enhancements aim to improve the management and usability of the data catalog, making it more intuitive and efficient. Moreover, recent updates in **Data Observability and Quality Improvements** provide a unified view of the data estate. This helps organizations identify areas for improvement in metadata, ownership, data quality, and architecture. Features like table lookup data quality rules and support for Azure Dedicated SQL Pool enhance data quality monitoring and management, ensuring data integrity.

The Data Mesh Approach

To prevent traditional data management problems, the data mesh approach adopts the concept of **Data as a Product**. Application owners and teams treat data as a fully contained product that they're responsible for, rather than a byproduct of another team's process. This approach ensures that both applications and analytical data-serving tasks are managed within domain responsibility areas. Data products are created specifically for analytical consumption. They have defined and agreed-upon shapes, consumption interfaces, and maintenance and refresh cycles, all of which are documented. This structured approach ensures that data is processed, shaped, cleansed, aggregated, and normalized to meet quality standards before being made available for use.

Design Considerations for Data Products

To fulfill data product serving requirements, domain teams must acquire new skills and use new tools and platforms. To build the data applications and produce or serve data products, domain application teams should be fully equipped. They can use a familiar technology stack to build data products, ensuring consistency and efficiency. For example, a large domain that serves many data products might process and serve data products from their own Azure Synapse Analytics instance. Smaller organizations and smaller domains of large organizations might develop and run their data applications on a shared platform, such as a centrally located Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, or Azure Databricks instance. It is crucial to ensure that data products have common characteristics, as described in the article, that the lineage repository reflects the data application lineage, and that the implementation and access are governed effectively. This structured approach ensures that data products are reliable, accurate, and valuable to downstream consumers. In conclusion, Microsoft Purview Data Products offer a comprehensive solution for data governance and management. By treating data as a product and leveraging advanced features, organizations can enhance their data strategies, ensuring data is accessible, reliable, and valuable. As data continues to play a critical role in business decision-making, embracing these technologies will be key to staying competitive and innovative.

Keywords

Data Strategy, Purview Data Products, Level-Up Data Management, Enhance Data Governance, Optimize Data Insights, Microsoft Purview Tools, Advanced Data Solutions, Effective Data Utilization