This has been a year unlike any other. Organisations have had to pivot quickly to adapt to everchanging circumstances, and the future is still unknown. Only resilient organisations will flourish over the coming months and years and must ensure they have plans in place so they’re able to meet sudden disruption and change. Resilience is especially important today because the business environment is becoming more dynamic and unpredictable.

Data has always been at the heart of organisational change and is more pertinent now, more than ever. Only those organisations that can harness the power of their data will continue to thrive in the future; turning disruption into opportunities

Breaking down the data silos

To harness the power of data, we first need to break down data silos. Data silos impact every part of an organisation and affects the ability to achieve actionable and impactful insights from your data. All too often, we see organisations wrestle with siloed data or struggling to centralise and/or manage their data estate in a manner that enables them to succeed. While not a new concept, achieving this has been a constant challenge of data and analytics as its ecosystem continues to be complex and heterogeneous. Organisations must break down silos to harness the full power of data and analytics, in a unified, secure, and compliant manner.

General Availability of Azure Synapse Analytics

After much anticipation, today, Microsoft have announced the general availability of Azure Synapse Analytics! Azure Synapse Analytics is a limitless analytics service that brings together data integration, enterprise data warehousing and Big Data analytics all into a single service, accelerating time to insights, enabling organisations to become data-driven. Azure Synapse combines capabilities spanning the needs of data engineering, machine learning, and BI without creating silos in processes and tools.

For more info, I’ve previously blogged about Azure Synapse Analytics.

Microsoft announce Azure Purview Preview

To enable the capabilities that Azure Synapse combines, without creating silos in processes and tools, a comprehensive data governance solution is critical. Organisations need to plan how they use data so that it’s handled consistently throughout the business to support business outcomes. Organisations who successfully consider the who, what, how, when, where and why of their data will not only ensure security and compliance but also the ability to extract value from all the information collected and stored across the business – improving business performance.

An effective and pragmatic data governance implementation addresses these challenges and helps the organisation truly leverage data and unlock the strategic value of data. To make all this possible, we are excited that Microsoft have released into Public Preview, Azure Purview – a unified data governance service that helps organisations achieve a complete understanding of their data. Purview helps discover all data across the organisation, track lineage of data and create a business glossary wherever it is stored: on-premises, across clouds, in SaaS applications, or in Power BI.

The combination of Azure Synapse Analytics and Purview enables organisations to develop the capabilities needed to empower their teams to leverage all data for analytics and data governance, silo-free.

Azure Synapse Analytics and Telefónica Tech

Telefónica Tech, a Microsoft Gold Partner, are an Azure Synapse launch partner and based in the UK.  We work with Microsoft to support organisations in their journey to data-driven insights utilising Azure Synapse.

To jump-start your data journey, the Telefónica Tech Rapid Analytics Deployment Service simplifies data ingestion, preparation, data analytics and visualisation, enabling organisations to go from zero to hero in weeks, rather than months and can help accelerate of your Data Analytics strategy. Get in touch to see how we can help.