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Kalido revs up data governance engine

Madan Sheina

Kalido revs up data governance engine

Kalido has further lightened the load for corporate data stewards by adding much-needed automated data-matching capabilities to its Information Engine. This upgrade will enhance Kalido's credibility as a one-stop shop for data governance, particularly in data warehousing and business intelligence (BI) circles. Overall it was a busy release for Kalido, which also delivered enhancements around scalability, usability, security and tighter integration with its modeling and data warehousing products.

The addition of data matching further strengthens the corporate firewall against 'bad' data

The integration of data-matching capabilities in Kalido's software portfolio has long been overdue. Information Engine is best described as a 'data firewall' that sits between a company's data warehouse and its business intelligence (BI) tools, guarding against 'bad' (i.e. unclean, inconsistent, inaccurate and out-of-date) data. It provides an adaptable enterprise-wide data management foundation that helps companies to ask and answer business intelligence questions consistently and accurately from their data warehouses - better than traditional ETL-based methods, or so Kalido claims.

The newly added data-matching capabilities are quite sophisticated and go beyond the standard de-dupe match algorithms that are used to help build and maintain a source of master data. They also include more sophisticated criteria such as use of hierarchy relationships, complex match definitions across fields, and master data elements or nicknames as part of the match process.

Adding matching strengthens Kalido's position as a data governance provider - i.e. helping companies to establish and maintain lines of cooperation between business and IT management on how common business data and metrics are defined, owned and used throughout the enterprise. Unfortunately, few companies can control all the external information coming into a data warehouse. Inevitably some of it will not match. Data matching plays an important role in aligning it with internal data standards.

Since data governance is a discipline that is closely related to master or reference data management - a historic strength of Kalido - that really should come as no surprise. However, the data governance puzzle is not just solved by master data management; it also encompasses other supporting technologies like data integration, metadata management, business glossaries, and data quality and hygiene (of which cleansing, profiling and matching are part). Of course, technology is just one aspect of a data governance framework; policies, standards and people are just as important.

Indeed, Kalido's Information Engine already provides a wealth of functionality and tools - validation rules, governance workflow processes, and audit and control procedures - that help companies to deal with bad and dirty data that is often the root cause of common day-to-day business problems.

An economic spotlight on data governance will raise the business validity of Kalido's software

The addition of automated matching broadens these data governance efforts and takes a big chunk of manual graft out of the enterprise data stewardship function. That will be a boon for companies bending under the strain of regulatory compliance and seeking to cut costs from their IT and business processes.

More companies recognise that the latter doesn't necessarily start with business process redesign. Rather, it starts with data and ensuring that formal and robust data governance programs are in place to ensure that enterprise business processes are being fed by a sufficiently high level of information quality. That's why Kalido has been talking up data governance for quite a while now, albeit from a distinct data warehousing angle.

Information Engine has been kicking around for while. Positioning this type of technology in a data governance conversation or context is sure to demystify its value and worth to businesses. It's true that the company has long struggled to demo its software, simply because there is nothing to 'see' - or at least catch the eye of business users. However, it is now becoming increasingly obvious that ERP and data warehouses alone cannot ensure nor deliver accurate, consistent and timely information in order to efficiently manage daily business operations and allow managers to make better business decisions. The timing of this product release is also spot on. The negative impact on business performance of bad and misbehaving data is further amplified in a tight economy. Hence Kalido is sure to find a more receptive business audience for its Information Engine.

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