Data Governance for SaaS (Part 1 of 2)
In my previous blog 'ITSM - choice matters' I received a comment regarding sharing some insights on Data Governance for SaaS. Thank you Aswin for your comment and also highlighting this very important topic...
To start with... parts of Data Governance have always been around from the times of 'king's wise men', 'homing pigeons to carry messages', 'tapping moss codes' to 'nomunication' (after work networking in Japan which has a mixture of word 'nomu' meaning 'to drink' in Japanese and 'communication'). There are growing ways in which people can share or store information but also just as many ways for organizations to have their data forgotten, lost or even stolen! 'Data Governance' is getting more formal because of a deeper realization of its risks and opportunities and hence a need to find ways to protect as well as exploit it. The need for organizations to control data and to create attractive avenues for valuable knowledge generation is indeed a high priority today.
One key reason why this is even more important is because of the evolving patterns of how we generate, store, retrieve and share information. All organizations, large or small, belong and operate within the global context today. No one is really off the grid or operating in isolation. Any vital information when left unprotected can reach far and wide at a tremendous pace. Hence, integrity and discipline in managing the organization data/information is paramount. We have lately seen large organizations scramble because of data loss, lapse or leaks. This is happening across industries and at a costly price of hard earned reputation. The fear that someone could tap into the cloud to drain protected information is further worrying as these are externally hosted. But then, would you keep all your valuables at home because you feel its safer as opposed to depositing it in a bank? Are the odds the same? Just a thought.
ITSM tools today carry a lot of that important data within service requests, incidents, change records, reports and the like. I remember a few years ago in some organizations ITSM tools were hardly even considered relevant with 'Silver' or at best 'Gold' SLA's. These days the demand is so high that anything less than 'Platinum' will not fit as it acts as a spine for the organization to keep the entire application landscape upright and running. The renewed attention from CIO's is also a huge boost and why not when its the 'backbone' we are talking about. The importance of IT within organizations and its portrayal to the rest of the business is another important factor for this change. Users have come to expect more! Especially given the great user experience people are accustomed to from the likes of Apple, Facebook, Google,Yahoo etc. I have heard so many clients draw and demand such parallel looking/working systems that the only answer I am left with is 'Why not!'. (I will cover consumer IT aspects and its impact to enterprise in a different blog).
To list some of them:
- IT Asset Management - enabling the restricted view of mobile sim PIN, User password, delegation rights control.
- Incident, Problem, Change, Release & Service Catalog Management - managing of exchange sensitive data (i.e. financial, health, legal data).
- Channeling data/triggers in Deployment provisioning & Product Catalog integration.
- Need for other workflow driven modules - Communication management, Records management (items which do not form a standard module in the tool).
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Need for Graphical plans and charts - for rollout plans, conflict detection, release schedules etc.
SaaS platforms are rapidly building functionality to manage such configuration and data governance options. Whats also different this time is the way its being done. User Experience and Data Governance are walking hand in hand. Nevertheless, these great 'features' and 'capabilities' need to be used wisely to achieve innovative and useful solutions.
Simplicity is attractive but therein also lies temptation. Its important that organizations manage optimum usage and think of longterm sustainability without going overboard. The goal at one end should be to get the data structure and relations right but at the same time to also contribute towards business benefit with meaningful workflows and configurations. The users expect their data to be relevant, timely and secure. There is indeed a binding responsibility for SaaS providers to ensure security and availability but beyond that the responsibilities are within an organizations judgement to secure and draw their evolving reliance to it.
