How Alex Data Lineage helps you Know Every Data Flow.
In a nutshell, Data Lineage involves visualizing the best understanding of data flows through a system from source until consumption. The aim is to present the most complete view of the lifecycle of data within a given system.
The ability to understand data lineage is critical for enterprises that are involved in complex data migrations, subject to data privacy and other relevant regulations, or are required to perform impact analysis and rapid remediation across multiple platforms.
Alex Solutions provides the ability to fully automate data lineage – across a range of technologies and platforms – enabling users to easily understand where all the data flows are coming from, and precisely where they need to go to in the target. Here is how Alex Data Lineage helps you know every data flow.
Fully automated Data Lineage, across a range of heterogeneous and homogeneous systems, technologies and platforms.
Essentially, all large companies that collect and use data must understand its location, movement and usage.
Data Lineage is perfect for this problem as it provides a simple, clear and accurate visual picture of how data is flowing through an organization. This means that Lineage can be used to easily answer governance FAQs: Who is using the data? Where is the data coming from? Why is the data the way it is? Without automated data lineage, these questions require hours of effort from subject matter experts to answer.
Alex Solutions automates data lineage on any system, technology or platform out of the box. This helps users understand where your data is coming from and how it relates to other data and systems at any moment in time.
With this knowledge, it’s easier to identify gaps in your data and improve efficiency by eliminating redundant workflows across teams within an organization or company as a whole.
Column-level Lineage.
Column-level lineage is automatically created for every table object in every system, technology and platform. It means you can see the data flows for each column in each table, thus providing the deepest possible understanding of how data within your system relates to other data and sources.
This allows any user to easily understand the complete Data Flow from end-to-end, from source to target, from any system or application. It also allows them to see all the data flowing through each step of the desired process. This gives you tremendous insight into where things can go wrong, and why your data is not being processed as expected.
The ability for a user to see this level of detail about their enterprise environment enables them to quickly identify issues in their design that may be causing problems or issues downstream in their processes and applications.
They gain visibility into whether their current architecture can support future needs without worrying about breaking changes caused by new projects coming online or existing ones going offline due to decommissioning events like hardware upgrades/replacements and more.
Report on the data flows to regulators out-of-the-box with Alex.
By now, the EU’s GDPR regime is well known to be the world’s leading reglatory framework for all kinds of organizations regarding the collection and use of data. Regulators like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are also interested in data flows, and they have regulations that require companies to report a full end-to-end data lineage.
In Australia, CPG 235 required companies that collect personal information to report their methods for safeguarding such information to regulators. As another example, BCBS 239 requires banks to report their processes for managing cyber risks.
Alex can automate data lineage mapping of data flows across any enterprise system—both ETL tools and applications—and then report on those flows out-of-the-box without custom development work. Some of the world’s largest companies are using Alex Data Lineage visualizations directly when reporting to regulators.
Cross-application, cross-platform impact analysis and rapid remediation is enabled by Alex’s detailed relationship maps and column-level lineages.
With a near instantly viewable map of a specific data asset’s complete flow and transformation history, decisions about architecture and data security come faster. For data security teams, having the ability to track the history of data assets, see what transformations it has undergone and what happened is invaluable.
Easily visualizing the data, including upstream and downstream impacts and relationships grants an more intricate understanding of it. For example, if there is an unauthorized access to sensitive personally identifiable information (PII), using Alex Lineage, you can immediately view the impacted dataset and respond quickly makes remediation faster and change less risky.
Alex Data Lineage reveals data management issues such as duplicates bad sources incorrect treatment, which enables critical remediation actions at all levels of your organization so that you can realize better business outcomes
Migrations.
Data Lineage powered by a world class automated Data Catalog can massively reduce the time and effort required to execute a migration or modernization operation in a few key ways. Having an automated map of all the relationships between specific data objects and technology systems expedites the planning and process of migration. Automated impact analysis that takes into account relationships, business context, sensitivity, usage, ownership and more allows teams to make informed decisions when conducting these large scale migrations.
Column-level lineage is critical for complex data migrations across different technologies and allows users to easily understand where all the data flows are coming from, and precisely where they need to go to in the target environment. Column-level lineage provides a complete picture of this data flow which gives customers more confidence as they move their workloads onto newer technologies such as cloud or hybrid clouds because they have visibility into what will change during each step along this journey.
System modernization and migration is complicated and high-risk. Taking legacy systems to a modern cloud or hybrid cloud environment requires intense efforts from subject matter experts in order to execute reliably and securely. Automation is sorely needed when huge amounts of data must be moved or updated because this always requires an understanding of the lifecycle, location(s) and dependencies on critical assets (elements).
Understand your precise Data Flows at keystroke speed with fully automated, cross-system, cross application Data Lineage!