Emerging technologies and evolving data governance

Delighted as we are to be recognised by this illustrious publication as one of The Most Influential Financial Technology Firms of 2023, we at Solidatus don’t see our success in isolation. We’re part of a tech and data governance ecosystem. And, given how vast the tech sector as a whole is, it’s that specific ecosystem we’ll examine today.

I start with two articles of faith:

■ Data governance has been accelerated by the emergence and impact that new technology has on companies that hold a certain amount of data, particularly in regulated industries.

■ Technical innovation demands a higher bar of data governance and fuels the advancement of data governance technologies.

Solidatus is leading this technology adoption and driving to support the opportunities it creates. But in this article, I evaluate this space more generally, homing in on some of the technologies that we and others are exploring.

Context

Today’s state-of-the-art data governance technology didn’t exist in yesterday’s world, one we now consider ‘small data’ vs ‘big data’. And before that, governing physical data records was a different game entirely.

Current emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, IoT and the mass-availability of globally distributed computing are driving the need for better data practices. Compounding this, new innovations are not happening in isolation. Yesterday’s new technologies are today’s legacy, and this adds well-known stress to data professionals.

As we make more things possible, our reach and footprint demand a higher level of responsibility.

At Solidatus, we’re building the future of data management; not only to govern future data but the journey there too.

We have built a proprietary graph database for metadata which is specifically designed to help organisations better manage their data by providing a single, unified view of their data assets, as well as tracking data lineage and impact analysis.

Let’s finish by looking at some of the specific technologies that will help us – and you.

Automation

We understand how data moves around an organisation using our supercharged scanners. Our connectors – which help map metadata from external systems

Daniel Waddington Chief Technical Officer, Solidatus

into Solidatus models – don’t just catalogue data sets, they perform deep analyses of source code, ETL jobs and business intelligence reports to understand how businesses operate from a data flow perspective.

Change detection

We’ve engineered a change monitoring engine into the heart of our metadata store. As well as capturing fine-grained information about organisations’ data structures and how they’re used, we detect and visualise the exact changes that occurred and the potential impact those changes might have.

Active metadata

Building on automated metadata capture and fundamentally understanding how this changes over time, we are innovating to develop an ‘active’ metadata solution.

Whilst innovation is necessitating more technological advancement in understanding how we use, control and change data, we’re more than just an information store. We have developed a powerful querying capability into our proprietary graph metadatabase. The query engine operates over entire end-to-end data flows to proactively monitor and detect opportunity to drive change and generate opportunities.

When it comes to smarter data governance, the emergence of our own technology – from automation, to change detection, active metadata and beyond – is already fuelling and enabling the next innovative leaps at some of the most visionary financial services organisations.