What Is Microsoft Purview? Learn the Benefits and Features

Hey, we get it. Having your data off-site can feel scary. At SkyTerra, we understand that business leaders who are considering Microsoft Purview want reliable and redundant data backup, rapid and comprehensive security and rock-solid disaster recovery.

You want a cloud solution that allows you to govern, protect and manage your data with ease. With cybercrime at an all-time high, it’s imperative to have access to trustworthy and valuable data management resources.

Microsoft Purview delivers an integrated data governance solution, adept at overseeing and managing on-premises, multi-cloud and software as a service (SaaS) data environments. You can seamlessly construct a comprehensive, current map of your data landscape with the assistance of automated data discovery, sensitive data classification and end-to-end data lineage.

What Are the Benefits and Features of Microsoft Purview?

One major benefit of Microsoft Purview is the cost savings. It helps reduce the need for manual and custom data discovery and classification and eliminates costs for maintaining personal systems and Excel-based solutions.

And did we mention you pay only for what you use? Plus, scan SQL Servers and Power BI tenants come at no extra cost. And that’s not all. Microsoft Purview also offers:

Data Map

Microsoft Purview Data Map provides the foundation for data discovery and data governance. It captures metadata about data present in analytics, SaaS and operational systems in hybrid, on-premises and multi-cloud environments.

Data Map stays up to date with its built-in scanning and classification system and offers features that enable users to:

Automate and manage metadata from hybrid sources
Classify data using built-in and custom classifiers and Microsoft Information Protection sensitivity labels
Label sensitive data consistently across SQL Server, Azure, Microsoft 365 and Power BI
Easily integrate all your data catalogs and systems using Apache Atlas APIs

Data Catalog

Searching a data catalog is a great tool for data discovery if you know what you’re looking for. Oftentimes, users don’t know exactly how their data estate is structured.

The Microsoft Purview Data Catalog offers a browser experience that makes it easy to explore what data is available to you, either by collection or through traversing the hierarchy of each data source in the catalog, and also enables users to:

Make data easily discoverable by using familiar business and technical search terms
Eliminate the need for Excel data dictionaries with an enterprise-grade business glossary
Understand the origin of your data with interactive data lineage visualization
Provide data scientists, engineers and analysts with the data they need for BI, analytics, AI and machine learning

Data Estate Insights

The Microsoft Purview Data Estate Insights application provides actionable insights into your organization’s data estate, catalog usage, adoption and processes. As you scan and populate your Microsoft Purview data map, the Data Estate Insights application automatically extracts valuable governance gaps and highlights them in its top metrics.

Pretty nifty, right? By using Data Estate Insights you can:

View and manage key health metrics across your hybrid data estate
View your whole data estate and its distribution by asset dimensions such as source type, classification and file size
Get status updates on how many scans succeeded, failed or were canceled
Gain key insights to add or redistribute glossary terms for better search results

Data Sharing

If you haven’t already caught on, it’s all about the data with Microsoft Purview.

Traditionally, organizations have shared data with internal teams or external partners by generating data feeds and requiring investment in data copy or refresh pipelines. The result is higher costs for data storage, movement, data proliferation and delayed access to time-sensitive data. Whew, that’s a ton of data to process. (⬅ See what we did there?)

Microsoft Purview Data Sharing enables users to:

Easily share data in place with no data duplication
Access shared data in near real-time
Centrally manage data sharing
Get support for Azure Data Lake Storage (Gen 2) and Blob Storage

Data Policy

As businesses grow, so do the challenges associated with continual and upward growth. The same data center solutions that worked just fine yesterday may be holding you back today. That’s why at SkyTerra, we work hard to help you identify and proactively plan for your business’s future needs, especially as it pertains to safely storing and accessing your data.

With Microsoft Purview Data Policy, users can provision access to data through an intuitive authoring experience that involves:

Enabling data engineers and owners to provision access to data assets
Getting support for subscriptions, resource groups, Azure Blob storage, Azure Data Lake (Gen 2), Azure SQL DB and SQL Server 2022

How Can You Integrate Microsoft Purview Into Your Business?

At SkyTerra, we understand that the people in your organization (and perhaps even you) find new or modified processes, technologies and solutions like Microsoft Purview, difficult to fully grasp. We know what you’re looking for is a clearly defined delivery roadmap; managed by people who get people.

Let us alleviate any confusion, opposition or apprehension by serving as your strategic guide to success. Book a meeting with us today and speak with a certified Microsoft Tier 1 cloud solutions provider (CSP) who can help you integrate Microsoft Purview into your business for comprehensive security and compliance built into your existing systems.