Microsoft Purview Data Governance Reviews

We use Purview for data cataloging and to build the DME (Data Management Environment) for enterprise data. We also use it to understand the insights of how data is flowing across systems, from ERP systems to our data warehouse and the installation layer. This helps us to look at data classifications and where exactly sensor data is being used. It gives us a bird-eye view. 

There are two primary use cases. One is to build the data catalog for our enterprise data, and the other one is to build the lineage. These serve to provide a clearer understanding of the data aspect.

There are two things: I'm more specific about data for Purview. There are two types of tools in Purview, but I have exclusively used data Purview. Purview is basically the one for data governance, and there is for enterprise-level security. I am more involved in the data governance aspect.

Purview has helped to reduce the number of solutions we need to interact with each other. That's the best thing with Purview: we can have a lot of options to get a view to identifying data that not only helps directly have access, but we can still have access to the data catalog and have a view of all the data access across the system. 

We can also look at certified assets. I'll also look at ratings and tags so that we can find the right valuable data or trusted data that we can go for without anyone's help here. Based on the feedback, even from a few of the data supports or the experts, that would definitely help because it stops building the dependency with a specific person, and we can contribute once in the data catalog, and we could use those extensively across the org.

There are multiple aspects that it helps. It's not specific to security, it's not specific to what we call data classification. Another thing is we can have visibility across not specific to one area. We can explore all on-prem systems, cloud, multi-cloud platforms, and data in our data lake, SQL database, and Power BI. We have visibility of everything. We don't need access to the actual sources, but we can have just a view of our enterprise data, which is definitely the best thing I can say in terms of visibility. For example, if any chief data officers want to look at the enterprise data or the data estate completely, it would definitely help a lot in looking at what data is in-house and sensitivity where exactly the sensitivity data is being placed. That's the best thing I can say in terms of giving visibility to data officers and data storage.

There are a few audits we had. We used to track all the sensitive information, and in most cases, I can select Excel or any spreadsheets we have. Purview would help us with a single scan of our data sets, giving me the availability of where exactly the sensitive information is by just adding data classifications at one time. 

Purview has defaulted a lot of our classes already enrolled, but on top of it, we can tweak it based on our custom needs. Then, scan data and get insights, which will definitely be a better way of doing data governance because if we want to perform any audit, it takes a lot of time. But with Purview, once we define our requirement and then scan it, we'll have the data before any audits that we want to perform. It's definitely helpful, especially in terms of data audits. 

Purview will give us the classification of where data sits and then show us how it is being curated, how it is being stored across systems, who the end users are, and how it is being used. It definitely helps a lot in terms of complaints and staying on top of compliance. The important thing to say is that we can predefine and use it and have it ready to use. That's important. It scans the data frequently, so we get the insights updated frequently.

The most valuable features are lineage, data cataloging, glossaries, and the new access delegation feature. This feature will make it quicker to delegate access to all the data with a single request button.

On Azure, it's definitely important that Purview delivers data protection across multi-platform environments. It gives us complete visibility of where our security data resides and what types of data we have. 

This is useful because we store data across multiple platforms, including databases, storage, spreadsheets, Excel, CSS, and caching. Purview helps us to see where exactly our data is stored across the system, especially in Azure. This is a great advantage because it helps us to feel more secure when moving our data to the cloud.

Moreover, Purview's data connector platform is getting valid day-to-day. It has connectivity to major cloud platforms, like GCP and AWS, and also it has a couple of areas. So it supports multi-platform and a couple of on-premise systems. It also connects a few of the heterogeneous databases.

It gives us insights. There are two aspects of it—one is about data governance and one is about security. Since I'm part of data governance, it does not deal much with threats because that's a different tool that will give us more insights about the threats. But in terms of data threats, I'll have visibility on who and how to stop it.

As we are looking at Purview as an enterprise-level tool, there are two areas where I still see that there is something that can be improved.

One is about disaster recovery. Purview has not matured in the way of building the tool without having disaster recovery. We don't have disaster recovery or high availability. If anything goes wrong, like, there are any changes happening, and I want to roll back, there is no way that I can roll back in the existing system.

For example, I have a data source in which one of the users has dropped or deleted the data unknowingly or accidentally. In that case, there is no way to roll back those changes. That's one place where Purview can improve it.  

I have been using this solution for a year. 

I have never experienced a crashing issue so far but lagging happens. It depends on our network traffic from where we are using it. 

Our overall experience is good. I have never seen any issues with Purview.

As it's consumption-based, it's easily scalable because Microsoft takes care of it, and I don't need to look at any hyperscaler for this.

We are good with the scalability but, the cost factor is involved here. Once you scale up, the cost is higher, so we have to be more cautious about it.

The customer service and support are good. The support team was quite helpful in many of cases. For example, when I want to contact any person, like a Microsoft client partner, they help me with one of the requirements, and we had some workshops and a few guidelines given to us. That was very helpful for us. 

Since Purview is a new product, it has multiple features being adopted.

Positive

It was more of manual work that we used to do, like doing the audit and building the data catalogs.

Since we are a Microsoft shop, that's one reason why we are going with Purview. We have other tools like Collibra, but that will be costly and may not. It requires a lot of effort compared to Purview to implement. That's the reason we chose Purview.

The initial setup was straightforward, with minimal dependency on the administrators.

We didn't get help from the integrator, reseller, or consultant.

Purview helped to save time and money. If we are looking for an enterprise-level solution, Purview would be the best tool. 

We have invested around $22k per month. But we have to work more on showing a return on investment because I see only a few users using this because data lineage is one area we are focusing more on, but still, there are a lot of issues in getting it. Down the line, I can say this is going to give us a return on investment but we are not there. Right now, we are trusting that we will get that soon.

Since it's more consumption-based, the pricing looks good, but we should have a few options to limit Purview. 

In terms of usage or size and limit the price. Right now, we don't have control over it because it depends on the volume of data IT stores and the number of users being used concurrently. So those are a few areas we don't have control over because it's completely on the consumption base now.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten.  

As a consultant, I work with clients to sell the idea of data governance. In doing so, we do POCs, proof of concepts, and MVPs, which are minimal, viable products. 

For Microsoft Purview, most of the time, it's also associated with other products -whether it's ADS, Synapse, Key Vault, Databricks, storage accounts, Kubernetes, et cetera. 

I also worked on a project to integrate it with processing. I created a data governance accelerator combined into two products, including Synapse, and we sell that to customers.

The data catalog, the data lineage, the data glossary, and the classification are the key features I appreciate, along with the tight security, and role-based security.

There are two flavors of Purview. There's the compliance, which it does the security and all that. And then there's the Microsoft side, which is the data side. I primarily work on the data side. 

I like that Purview can connect to IOS, Mac, Android, and other SaaS apps.

Its data connector platform for supporting ingestion from non-Microsoft data sources works really well. We can use it either through a self-hosted integration runtime or on a VM. Or it can capture data from just about anywhere. There are about 100+ connectors. It's great.

Its natively integrated compliance across Azure Dynamics is a game changer. Back in the day, we never had anything like that. It provides self-service. It provides easy look-up and glossary terms. It also requires a new role called the data steward which we never had before.

It was built to take into account critical regulations from around the world. Now it's no longer something that's nice to have - it's necessary.

Purview helped to reduce the number of solutions we need to interact with each other. If you were to do this custom, it'd be very difficult. It's so easy to use and stand up and configure. There are some configuration requirements that are not self-explanatory. It takes some research; however, we already figured out all those things.

Purview affected the visibility we have into our estate. Now we have a complete ecosystem of where the data is, and it's a lineage. It's a game-changer.

I've used AI and automation in Purview. That's what the scans are. It uses AI to determine the classification. It's built-in. It's under the hood. People don't see it.

Our speed and accuracy of risk detection are good. From a compliance perspective, it helps identify sensitive information by classification. 

The product has helped us save both time and money. From a time perspective, there's an initial upfront cost to stand it up and configure it. However, once it's running, there's very little to do. So there's a one-time hit up front for the implementation in configuration, yet downstream, there's significant time reduction.

Money-wise, it's the same thing. You're only charged for when you run the scan since the storage is minimal. So there are ways to reduce cost, and that is by running it less frequently. Also, there's a whole bunch of out-of-the-box classifications that aren't required. There are ways to increase your cost reduction. Of course, that is not self-explanatory. You have to work with it for a while to know that.

The one thing it doesn't do is data quality. That's its only pitfall. The problem is people think it does. So either they're not marketing it right, or, eventually, it's on the road map, and they haven't got to that part yet.

In order to get data in and out, you have to use custom code using Python. That's an inconvenience, and almost every customer wants that feature. For example, let's say I run some scans on some data, and then that data goes away. This issue is Purview still shows it. There's no easy way to clean up your orphan data. That's a problem.

I've used the solution since 2015.

The stability is very good. Microsoft is solid on the cloud. 

The scalability is quite nice. 

They just changed their model so that you're only allowed one Purview per tenant. So you either get the free one, which is limited, or you purchase the enterprise one, which costs money. However, you only get one per tenant. That's a change they made within the last two months. You can't have three Purviews in the same tenant anymore. That change required a redesign of how people implement it. That said, they are offering it for free. 

I've worked for Microsoft to help a client who was having difficulty. I documented it. We had a backlog where other people were experiencing the same problems. You can reach out via phone or email. 

I did not previously use a different solution.

I was involved with the initial setup. I also can configure it. There is quite a bit of configuration required as you need it to speak with other resources. 

The initial installation is pretty easy. It is like any install on Azure. You just enter a few parameters, and it builds it. Then, if you want to start adding resources, there's a bit of configuration. It only takes about ten minutes. However, you have to know which settings you have to add. 

Only one person is needed to deploy the solution. 

Once it is up, there is very little maintenance going forward.

The cost is pay-as-you-go. It provides easy ramp-up and very little maintenance down the road. If you want to shut it down, you just delete it. It's easy to use, easy to configure, and the costs aren't that great. 

I could see more and more companies using this going forward if they're already in Azure, and it's so easy to set up. It's a requirement now as well since data is the lifeblood of any organization. If you have bad data or you don't know where it is, or suffer from data silos, this will solve all that.

We're a Microsoft Gold Partner. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Using the Microsoft unified cloud-based data governance is going to allow users to gather data across the entire ecosystem, classify it, place a glossary on top, and look at the lineage in addition to a whole bunch more. They have self-service policies and DevOps policies. Microsoft is heavily funding this tool, and it's now a requirement, not nice to have. Just about every Azure customer is going to incorporate Purview into their ecosystem, and it's going to help govern their data, which is an asset that will help companies increase sales, reduce costs, and streamline processes.

I'm a cloud consultant and prefer Azure Purview as a governance tool. A few of my clients are in the banking sector, including global and Indian banks. They need a centralized solution for compliance and governance. 

I haven't used Purview much for SaaS or device management, but I have explored the SaaS services and PaaS in terms of other tools that can be integrated with Azure Purview. Our clients often have an ETL solution that's in Azure directly. Most of our clients use Synapse Analytics or Databricks. One of our energy clients in Australia has the same use case for data platform implementation. They have some unstructured data on-premises, and it goes back to the Azure storage account as raw data. They do some transformation with the help of an ETL tool. For agentless forecasting, they do model training with the help of Databricks or Azure machine learning. They'll use Power BI for visualization, but Purview is the centralized governance tool.

Purview improves compliance and governance with data source and auto-scanning features. All those data assets would be in a centralized repo that pulls from different sources and databases that hold the bank data or the customer's data. The solution enhances compliance in terms of security factors and issues like duplication. It scans for new data coming in and older data that already exists. Purview collects the metadata to get a clearer visualization of all the compliance aspects. 

Another benefit is accelerated migration. Purview facilitates smooth migrations by giving clients insights into their data, which data is useful, and what kind of data is non-compliant, so you can classify data based on compliance, priority, and utility. It helps clients decide which data is essential and should be migrated. Identifying non-compliant data can help clients improve security and privacy.

Data analysis and classification isn't a two-day or two-week job. It's a long-term process. It might take two or three months to gather feedback on what kind of data is the most beneficial, like structural data, static data, etc. The data lineage doesn't come in one or two days. It takes some time to get a complete picture of your source and destination and the data cycle from start to finish. You can say that the data was in this phase six months ago, and now it is in this phase. Six months is enough to get a clear picture of the data flow and the kinds of data that are most beneficial.  Purview is helpful for long-term data management and classification.

Purview improves visibility. If I go back to a year ago, when I was learning Purview, my perspective was different. There were fewer features, and Purview has grown at a rapid pace. I was originally a network engineer, but I am now a cloud consultant, so it was challenging to work with the Azure version initially. I started seeing the benefits of its data classification features once I started consulting, seeing everything that comes into a client's bucket, and receiving feedback. Now, I can see the solution's strengths in governance and compliance.

The auto-scanning functionality and automation features in Azure have a positive impact when connecting data sources. When there are multiple data sources, we can make connections and start discovery. Manual discovery will take so long, and we don't know when the new data is coming in, so automation is useful. When new data comes into the databases, Purview triggers that auto-discovery part so the data stays updated. It's more efficient and more accurate.

For example, we have let's say we have data coming in this month. We have a discovery scan, and some new data comes into the databases after a day or two. If we don't run the auto-scanning feature, the data will get outdated. It would affect if we need to present something or calculate something. We can discover data quickly and get accurate data. It isn't completely in real-time. It still takes time to refresh things, but we haven't 

Automated discovery reduces the amount of time needed to take action on insider threats. If discovery is already done, it's easier to classify the data and import it into a data visualization tool like Power BI. We need to complete the discovery before moving on to the data lineage component or the Data Factory pipeline. It reduces the time by about 12 to 15 percent.

My favorite Purview feature is auto-scanning. Once we set up Purview, we can automatically scan multiple data sources when new data comes into specific databases, like SQL and Oracle. We don't need to rediscover the new data or do anything manually because it automatically happens.

Purview also offers some additional integration capabilities if you use the Azure edition. We can seamlessly integrate tools like Azure Data Factory and Synapse Analytics to provide analytics and data transformation services in a customer's ETL pipeline. Organizations want to structure that data, so they use a basic ETL tool, which is commonly Azure Data Factory. Purview provides us with all the connectors needed to integrate these data tools. Another feature I like is data lineage. Purview tracks the data from its source to the destination. 

I haven't seen many challenges with integrating or supporting native Microsoft solutions like Office 365. We haven't come across anything in Microsoft 365 that's unsupported out of compliance with HIPAA regulations in the health sector or banking and finance regulations. It conforms to PCI DSS compliance methodology or GDPR.

We have multiple clients in the energy and banking sectors. Purview is vital in data platform implementation projects involving ETL transformations and model training. It's our default tool for governance when we're pitching our organization during presales. However, our smaller customers often don't need that much governance, or they're good with Azure Monitor. They may also prefer some other governance tool or might have an on-premise tool that they are already using. They don't want to change it despite the integration and features. Our big customers may have existing governance tools, but they want to use Purview because it offers additional features. It provides them security, compliance, and the flexibility to integrate with third-party and Azure native tools. 

Two features are unsupported—custom insights and the DLP component—that would be beneficial to me as a consultant and for the customer in terms of security and monitoring. Regarding security, DLP would provide a more granular level of data masking. Custom insights would offer more detailed monitoring and alerts that can notify customers of failures or anything requiring urgent action. 

DLP is not a part of Purview. Our larger customers require some advanced features, such as dynamic data masking, encryption, and decryption. For example, some of our projects in Dubai involve machine learning use cases and encrypted critical data on-premise. It varies. Data encryption and masking are not priorities for some customers.  

Microsoft has some built-in data masking tools. Some customers believe that masked data is safe, and they don't want to move it. We tell the clients that Purview doesn't move the actual data, only the metadata. The customer is convinced that DLP is not part of Purview, but that is not a concern because it's all about metadata. The original data is not transferred from on-premise to Azure. Purview is not storing the actual data. It takes the data to perform discovery and provide better data classifications. If DLP is added, then Purview will be stronger.

When I talk to clients about these DLP features, they say it still lags behind in data integration and support. It does not affect the sales side or prevent us as consultants from convincing them to switch because of these two unsupported features. However, Purview does need some improvements in data security and third-party integrations.

I have worked with Purview for a year. 

I rate Purview six out of 10 for stability. It is stable, but they're constantly adding new features, so it needs more stability in the future. 

Purview is a scalable solution because Microsoft manages everything on the back end. We don't need to handle any databases or servers. We can talk about the general scalability of Azure services, not Purview specifically. The SLA gives an uptime of 99.99 percent. I have not had any scalability issues with Azure services, and this goes for Purview as well.

I rate Microsoft support seven out of 10. They respond quickly and follow up fast after the issue has been closed to see if the problem is resolved. 

Neutral

I have not used GCP, but the AWS centralized governance tool lags in terms of authentication and authorization. AWS also has features like data lineage it can provide. However, Purview stands out for security protections and role-based access control. Purview offers better granularity compared to the AWS or GCP governance tools. The access control list enables granular levels of access to its users. 

Deploying Purview isn't too complex. The initial installation takes about eight hours. Setting up a data governance solution involves configuring the networking components. The networking part can be done in parallel with deploying other services. However, you must completely implement the data platform before connecting the data sources and performing data discovery. Later, you can begin the data analysis and classification on Purview. 

The data deployment and networking configuration is similar to deploying other Azure services. I imagine on-prem Purview requires more time to set up. If we are giving a client an estimate of the time it would take to complete the project, the deployment and networking part would not additional time. However, the data discovery, classification, lineage, and data source connectivity, require two more weeks. The total deployment takes five to eight weeks plus an additional two weeks for the discovery phase.

The networking engineer who deployed Databricks, Azure Data Factory, Synapse Analytics, etc. can easily deploy Purview because it's the same. However, we require a dedicated Purview engineer for the discovery phase. We haven't had to do much maintenance so far. 

Microsoft Purview is priced in the middle. It isn't the cheapest, but it isn't the most expensive. It's affordable compared to other public cloud services. Purview costs about 20 percent less than AWS, but it is still expensive compared to other Azure services and governance tools. 

I rate Microsoft Purview seven out of 10. I recommend Purview over other governance features because it has multiple features that make it stand out from the rest. Once it is updated with features like DLP and custom insights, Purview will be a market leader. These additional features will help the solution earn more enterprise-scale customers. 

I'm an implementer and an integrator. In my last project, I used Purview for a government organization, so we primarily used it for data governance and data lineage. We haven't used it with Microsoft 365. It's a portal that takes data from SQL Server and the data lake. We mainly work on the data governance and security side. About 20 business analysts use Purview. The company has around 100 people in the department.

Microsoft Purview helps us manage data in various formats like Dynamic SQL. It performs two procedures. The primary function is to ingest the SQL database and modify the data type or column name. It also manages the data types and all the metadata related to the tables and columns. It puts everything in one place in the call view or the description pertaining to the business logic, plus the column-level descriptions.

It streamlines things by reducing the number of solutions that must interact with each other. When everything was done manually, each program maintained its own version of the Excel file. Now, it's in one central place, and I can go to Purview to manage the permissions.

By centralizing everything, Purview gives senior management greater visibility into their data. It also makes the data more accessible to non-technical people who need to access the data daily. It's easy for an admin to provide them access if they need to check something quickly. 

Purview checks compliance in real-time. It's helpful when we're meeting with regulators. We must follow European data regulations, so we must manage security and access. We need to show them a log of who had access, who gave it to them, and how many days they had access. That is all shown in Purview, plus other columns like the NHS identification numbers, etc. 

I rate Purview a six out of ten for its ability to help us stay on top of compliance. The product is still not mature enough. There are so many servers on Purview.

I like Purview's data discovery features. It automatically scans and identifies all the fields. In the last project, the customer required us to have some of the codes we specified in this, and we had to structure the codes in a specific way. We can define the structure. 

Previously, everything used Excel, so everyone had their own version of the same spreadsheet with different data, and they were managing it on SharePoint. That's why we moved it to Purview. 

Purview's privileged access manager helps us explore user access rights within the data lake. We use the data lineage and governance features. It can also explore secret data, but we still haven't implemented this feature. It has secure connectors for non-Microsoft sources, which is critical. We're bringing in files from storage. Purview connects to storage, scans it, and edits the required information. 

We've had a few issues with the scanner. It runs perfectly one day, and on another day, it will run the whole night. It's probably related to the rules. If I set some compliance rules and apply the rules to any column, I can't delete it. I have to disable it and reactivate it.

We have two instances. One is for everything, and the other is for the production environment. Sometimes there is a bug when the scan runs overnight. When we come in the next morning, it's still running, so we have to stop and restart it. This is costly.

I have used Purview for a year and a half. 

I rate Purview a six out of ten for stability. 

Purview is scalable. You can integrate it with on-premise solutions and third-party products. 

I rate Microsoft's support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

Our client was using Informatica. We used Purview for this project because the client has everything on Azure. It's better to use Purview when you work on Azure. We compared Informatica's available features with Purview's, and the client decided to go with Purview because of all the services in Azure. Microsoft is constantly adding new features to Purview.

Deploying Purview is straightforward. We deployed manually by creating services in Azure. The initial setup took five or six months. After that, we spent some time setting up the scan rules and defining the structure. I deployed the solution along with three other people. We worked with one or two people from Microsoft during the deployment. We have an excellent relationship with Microsoft, and they're helpful when we have any questions. 

We've seen a return from using Purview because it's more accessible to high-level managers without technical knowledge. 

Purview's price is pretty high when you factor in storage costs. 

I rate Microsoft Purview a six out of ten. It's a good service if you only use Azure. If you have an on-prem environment or use another cloud provider, you can compare Purview to other solutions. 

I was working for a nonprofit here in Kansas called Children International. I was a global data engineering manager, and I was tasked specifically with developing a data governance program. And at the same time, that's right when Purview came out. So I spent a year in that realm. I've been very plugged into Purview ever since.

The main use is data governance. Now, not every firm is necessarily at that maturity level when it comes to understanding data as an asset. So, a lot of companies can use it just as a data dictionary, a business glossary, which is nice, but it doesn't give the entire picture of what Purview can actually do, and so, actually, there were a dozen of implementations of Purview that I have been a part of in the past. I've led as a consultant and an architect. I'd say maybe I have used twenty-five percent of every feature that it has to offer. I am still kind of catching up with the rest of the features.

Microsoft Purview breaks down barriers to sharing information, accessing data, understanding what a piece of data means, how it is defined, how it's interpreted, and then how the end user uses it. So, with Purview, when it's best used, and it is at its best when the end users are the ones that are very involved because they're the ones who are going to be using it. Its users can see the support, and it grows year over year, you know, a kind of revenue measure. I don't know how exactly this is created. Also, I don't know what fields it uses. I don't know exactly what this means. We have a different department in the company that may need this. So they feel the need to go out and then hop to Purview. So it definitely knocks down a lot of barriers. It eliminates a lot of needless communication between different departments, and it just centralizes all information about an organization's data assets.

Speaking of the valuable features, I would speak on behalf of my clients, considering how it seemed when it was implemented. So, the sensitivity labels are big. The insights are also very nice as it gives the visual representation of being able to look at what or how the data storage is performing, especially monitoring if they are tagging technical assets or if they are adding business glossary terms. So, that's big, along with the basic features of Microsoft Purview. I'd say the last one that is very big with most clients is data lineage and being able to integrate that end-to-end flow component kind of so they can see that this is data from a Power BI dataset, and then they can follow where that dataset is coming from like it's from a SQL query in a Power BI report itself and data coming from a SQL Server, etcetera, etcetera.

The out-of-the-box connectors and being able to connect to third-party apps and data storage were some of the areas where they started off strong, but that's something that I think needs to continuously be at the forefront of the developers and the engineers for Purview to make sure that it is constantly up to date and can talk with any data source that it may need within a data state. So I would say that's not necessarily a con, but it's a possible weak point that could be strengthened.

I've been implementing Microsoft Purview with my clients for three and a half years. I'm a consultant for a Microsoft partner.

I think Purview, in terms of its stability, a lot of people think Purview itself is for data governance. Whereas data governance is something that is more like how we now view, let's say, Toyota six sigma or Agile, where it's kind of embedded in an organization and kind of culturally and throughout the work that's being done, it's kind of embedded in the network. I think Purview is kind of the same way. So, data governance operates in the same way. It first needs to be adopted and agreed upon by those that will be using it. Purview is the tool, and that's, like, the actual interface, and that's the actual, you know, that's the tool that allows it to be done. But in terms of stability, I think Purview does as good a job as it can of providing a foundation to make stability with data governance as easy as possible for those that manage it, but it does come down to those that are in charge of Purview itself to make sure that it stays stable. Well, I won't just say stable. I'll say that it is as stable as the data governance maturity that exists within an organization. It can't be more stable than that.

Scalability is fantastic considering their pricing since it addresses their pricing where it can have your incremental scans, which can cut down on your computing costs. That's great for scalability. So, if you have more data and you need to scan more and more, you don't need to scan the exact same data again and again and again. You may be okay only scanning the entire database maybe once a week, and then, let's say daily, you have incremental refreshers that help very much, or that help a lot with scalability. I think as more an organization scales and the more that it uses Purview with that scaling, the more you can get out of it, and the more it'll end up helping the organization, the more the stewards that are in their tagging things, the more that data is suggested, and that triggers are set up for ingestion runs. The more it scales, the better it is.

I have spoken with Purview's product team consisting of engineers who created Purview that writes the documentation that will work on bugs hands-on. Also, I've been a part of a lot of conversations, and I provided a lot of feedback in terms of improving Purview itself as a product and how we use it with our clients. So, there's been a lot of collaboration on that.

Considering Purview, I rate technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

There was not one solution. There were multiple solutions like Profisee involved. We also had Atlas and kind of a lot of commingling of those two and kind of piecemeal together solutions between a lot of those to do a Purview does. So not a whole lot, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

The deployment of the solution was done on Azure. A majority of our deployments for our clients are through a private cloud, and they're locked down with private DNS zones and custom DNS records on the back end if they're on their own servers and private endpoints as well. So fairly locked down, especially with where we talked about a lot of the data being sensitive and a need for it to be protected and monitored. Well, if data needs to be protected and monitored, then it likely is going to be needing something to be secure. So it's all been on a private cloud so far.

I was involved in the initial deployment of Purview. The initial deployments were actually straightforward because we were figuring out about the features, and found that it was a little less feature-rich, so there was less of a question. And it hasn't given us the time to figure out where it works well or where it doesn't work well, and if we need to bring in consultants or can we do this in-house. As Microsoft Purview got a little more mature, the deployments got a little more complex, as we were kind of seeing that there are a lot of ways, like there were a hundred ways to do one thing or less. I think that applies to anything in software. But it applies to Purview as well and where we control access to a given data source while figuring out if we should use the policies and governance features within Purview. We also thought if we should do it in Azure portal using RBAC or should it be elsewhere. So I think we passed that part, and then now we're going to get back to some smooth deployments, and a lot of them will be templatized, you know, whether it be in ARM templates or Bicep like Terraform. Overall, at first, the setup process was fairly smooth to moderate.

I have not been able to conduct any actual ROI analysis on Purview just because it is hard to measure those kinds of intangibles of how those results show up. But they absolutely show up if we consider data to be an asset. Also then, it can also be a liability, just like something that would be like a can of soup on the shelf in a restaurant. That's an asset as it exists then, but also there can be hazards. So, if it's a large pallet, it could fall and cause damage. So, data cost would be a liability. I think that it is not something that currently appears on the balance sheet and can be cut to draw that line, but I think it'll be made much clearer in the near future, especially as we've become more and more data-saturated and we'll be more conscious of the value of data. Regarding ROI, I have not done any analysis in that realm, but I have full confidence that there are real ROIs that do exist and that will show up one way or another in the future.

Price-wise, I think it's very generous and accessible to not just enterprises but small to medium-sized companies as well. I think it's very fair in terms of how they break apart the storage and the actual computing, and that makes it very accessible. So, that is a very big plus for Purview. I think a lot of clients and organizations would feel that way as well.

On the time front, I can absolutely speak about the cost of the solution since time is money. Saving analysts or developers, or engineers time can add or translate into actual savings if you can do the right calculation. But just to stick on that time front, I've seen it cut down, let's say, a given team, or a data governance team, I'd say, in a reduction of fifty to sixty percent of the time that would be spent answering maybe questions for other parts of the business about what a certain data means or where this data lives, they can just point them into certain directions, and they can point them to Purview and have those answers or have or have this questions answered. So that's a big part. And then also being able to have those ties from the business to IT and being able to bridge that gap and being able to have a technical asset ingested from the data side or, from the technical side, and then being able to get the business to interact with that as well. I would say that total savings in terms of on a team-to-team basis, I could see anywhere from fifty to seventy-five percent reduction in time spent on those activities just by having Purview.

After looking through other options, we decided for our clients that in these situations where they're already in a Microsoft data environment in terms of their data, whether it's living in Azure or on-prem, but the analytics that they're doing, whether it be with Power BI, with Synapse and Data Factory, it integrated so well.

Speaking about the importance that Purview delivers data protection across multi-cloud and multi-platform environments, including AWS and Google Cloud Platform, I would say that it's very important, and I am going to lean on the side of this that has to do with data protection in terms of international data protection and various laws that kind of force data to stay in certain places. For example, I have one of my clients, which is a Fortune 100 company, and they have three different main regions around the world, including Asia Pacific, the EU, and the US. They had a lot of financial data that were in these three regions, but they couldn't cross each other even though it was the same data that was being used in the same applications, but it was difficult due to various barriers and regulations for the actual data control. Hence, they couldn't pass between each other. So that was kind of an issue. We had to actually go and deploy multiple instances of Purview. We had a dev and a prod instance in these three regions. That was definitely very important, and that was because of not only regulations but because of their desire to keep their data private, secure, and kind of locked down.

Speaking of how important it is for me that Purview can connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices and data in other SaaS apps, it is not very important as it's typically with legacy databases and data warehouses.

Regarding Purview's data connector platform for supporting ingestion from non-Microsoft data sources, I think it's very robust, and out of the gate, they included a data connector that you can plug in straight to Amazon and SAP. I believe now that they have some connectors for Salesforce and things like that and Snowflake. So they are absolutely staying right on or ahead of the curve when it comes to making this kind of making sure that the interoperability between other vendors as well is taken into account, which is awesome.

Speaking of how important is Purview's natively integrated compliance across Azure Dynamics and Office, I think it's very important, and it does it very well. I mean, literally without a problem. It's completely seamless, and so it does that perfectly.

Speaking of how important it is to me that Purview was built taking into account critical regulations from around the world, I think that it is very important. So, that's what kind of gave birth to the original classifications for 200 or so out-of-the-box classifications for a lot of data for possible credit card numbers, passport data, and ZIP codes in different countries. They were definitely aware of that, and you could tell from their design process they keep updating those. And so that was definitely built with that in mind for sure.

I have never used Purview for data loss protection. Typically, in these solutions, when we're deploying Purview, they're usually at a stage in their data platform maturity where they already kind of have that taken care of elsewhere.

Speaking of whether Purview helped reduce the number of solutions I need to interact with, I would say that I don't think so because I think data governance exists kind of outside the solution's architecture for these kinds of things. So, I'll say no, but that's not in a bad way. It's just not its job, in my opinion.

In terms of Purview's visibility, I think visibility is the most significant part since that's kind of what it does as long as it's set up correctly and maintained by the data stewards and the business experts. The domain experts that actually know how to interpret these business glossary terms and can link them to data assets, then it is the most useful tool out there.

I haven't used Microsoft Purview's automation. However, I have used Purview's AI since we have had a few situations. While not many organizations have had to do this, we had two instances of Purview in a given tenant, which would be dev and prod. So, we would use some APIs and some Purview CLI. We automated a lot of those processes. Also, it's workflow automation in terms of approvals and sign-offs from a given definition being changed or a term being added and being able to send that to the right people, especially by sending an email to the right group for approval. So the automation piece is huge. I have not yet been a part of, or I have not, used any of the AI-related features.

Speaking of how automation affected my speed and accuracy of risk detection, I would say it went very well, especially when dealing with financial data or when dealing with possible credit card data, personal information, and health data. In PII or PHI, being able to have those classifications kind of flag that data if it comes through, and then being able to mask it or identify those is something huge. So, that's probably one of my favorite features considering how it's integrated into the various protection services that Microsoft and Azure have to offer.

Speaking of how automation affected the quality of the insights I have, I would say it has more to do with speed on that front. Also, it's going to be as good as the developers, data stewards, and experts working on it. As you know, it'll be as good as the effort that they put in to constantly go through and curate or update a certain classification, including what the threshold may be to make sure it's catching all of where it needs to cache for risk detection or risk mitigation. And there's definitely a one-to-one relationship that is a very linear relationship. So the more end users and stewards are involved, the more you get out of it in terms of every feature that it has to offer.

Regarding Purview enabling me to show my compliance in real-time, I would say that I believe that there are some integrations that I have not personally, which I think came out in Purview the last time when I was very heavily involved with Purview, which is maybe four or five months back. So, I have not used those yet. But in terms of real-time, I don't think we have used it yet. But I'm sure we'll do that eventually.

Regarding whether Purview helped to reduce the time to action needed for insider threats, I would say it has, especially in the context of early detection for possible sensitive data, like health data, credit card information, and things like that, and being able to alert the right parties. So, they can make decisions on whether they need a mask or not or if there was a problem with the actual data source, whether the data kind of slipped through, and if it should have been taken out. So, definitely, it works in that kind of early detection there and in terms of the speed of making those decisions.

I would say that Purview has helped save time and money for my clients. So, it's definitely a long road for data governance, and a lot of the benefits aren't necessarily very tangible, so they might not show up on the balance sheet. However, data is an asset and needs to be treated as such. Hence, those who implement these data governance programs and who use Purview to do that are absolutely gonna be ahead of the curve, and we'll save countless dollars and time. I mean, the savings start immediately. So, down the road is when you really see those effects come up.

I would agree that Purview has affected my ability to stay on top of compliance.

Regarding others who are looking into evaluating the solution, I think they should prepare by making sure that the individuals or the teams that internally exist that are in charge of or that have a very large say, and how data governance is or functions within that organization, they need to be on board and they need to be willing to kind of to go through the motions and be okay with having an iterative process once Purview is deployed. It's not all going to be solved on day one, and they're not going to have everything that they need right away. Again, it's a tool that their data storage and domain experts can use, I would say.

As I am trying to be as unbiased as possible, I would suggest those planning to use the solution contact Microsoft since there are a lot of financial incentives and reimbursements, and discounts that exist right now, also in the past, and in the future, I would assume that for Purview's demos and PoC engagements. So, trying to find or just having the first part, which is the internal understanding of what data governance is and what they want out of it, while the second part is Microsoft does very well by tucking in partners that can show them ropes.

Since there were some features recently that maybe I haven't been able to test, I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.

We are using it for governance on the cloud data migration. When people want to see legacy application Hadoop to Azure, we use the solution to gain some governance aspects and integrate it with Synapse on the final layer, which is the transform layer of the data lake. 

Purview was included at a single location in eastern Canada. There are close to 1,000 users.

It strengthens governance and provides visibility. It gives you better control and reports, then it integrates them with the Microsoft reporting solution. It integrates very well and helps provide visibility, but you need to do a lot of homework before you gain visibility. You need to understand the limitations in each of the data sets to gain visibility from a governance perspective.

For a tech organization, it gives them the ability to lower maintenance costs because it is natively integrated. So, it reduces the number of solutions that need to interact with each other. It is far easier for clients to operate and maintain that solution rather than be worried about a custom or hybrid solution, or even a best-of-breed. This solution makes it tougher because then you can hire people with different skill sets. 

Depending on the pipeline, it enables us to show compliance in real-time. This has sped up the decision-making cycle, making clients more proactive. They can do more internally before responding to compliance requests. For the banks, it is very important for them to be compliant with the standards that they are expected to adopt, e.g., GDPR. This gives them more time to prepare and figure out what the root cause could be if there are gaps.

Because governance analysts have these reports and dashboards out-of-the-box from Purview, they now have more time. For example, in a 40-hour work week, they would gain back three to four hours. So, the decision-making is faster.

Purview gives you more visibility and has native integration. It gives you a heat map regarding your risks. For example, where could there be potential exposure? It can very quickly identify non-compliance. Since it is natively integrated, the catalog tracker can quickly scan it.

It natively integrates. It gives you a lot of controls, awareness, features, and best good practices, making conversations a lot easier with the clients. Features are pre-built. All you have to do is configure it properly, and you get the correct tables and names of the entities with data. This reduces effort and gains efficiency, both for the clients and for SIs (like us). 

It is critical that Purview delivers data protection across multi-cloud and multi-platform environments. That is the number one reason that people are adopting hybrid and best-of-the-breed approaches. Especially in banking, it is critical because people want to protect, govern, and secure their data. This is one of the first conversations that happen with security and the architecture group on the client side.

It is a heterogeneous environment. That is a desire that the clients are asking for increasingly. So, the feature that provides data protection for iOS, Mac, Android, and data in other SaaS apps is pretty important.

Batch sources can connect well.

It works very well, but there are some limitations because it is a new product. For a lot of features, you need to wait until the time that Microsoft announces that they are generally available. Or, a lot of times, some features are not even available. Then, you need to go through their support channel. So, it's a mixed bag.

The API needs some improvement when connecting to non-Microsoft API sources. This is a limiting factor.

The integration with modern data warehouses needs a lot more traction. Because clients will not always adopt Microsoft Azure as their cloud, as they can choose to be in a heterogeneous environment. For example, I have three warehouses: Synapse, Snowflake, and Amazon Redshift. In this case, I would hesitate to adopt Purview, as it is not the best choice at this point in time.

I have been using it since it was launched in 2021.

The reliability is very good, but the stability is evolving as Microsoft is trying to challenge the established leaders with new features.

It is middleweight from a maintenance perspective, as there are two people from the client side at one site maintaining this, technically and functionally. There is a lot of leg work needed on the functional side. 

You need to keep an eye on it when applying a new patch or version from the cloud. You need to be very careful of how you upgrade that so it does not undo your customizations.

It scales without issues. In terms of performance, it scales pretty well.

Out-of-the-box, it is fairly easy to use the features. The clients have been happy overall, but they struggled when they tried to extend it to other applications in the cloud. This is getting better, from what I understand, as they release more feature enhancements.

The technical support is good. They respond quickly, though it depends on your license. If you have Premier Support, they will respond. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate them between eight and nine. They are trying to improve.

Positive

We did previously use another solution.

We had a client who decided to move to a single platform in the cloud. Azure was chosen because of its native dataset and proximity, e.g., the platform closest to the existing state of affairs. That is why Azure was chosen and the major reason for Purview to get adopted.

The initial setup is pretty complex. When you make it a private cloud, the security makes the setup complex. The public cloud is far easier. With a private cloud, you do the configuration to the right security standards and norms. You have to do the extra groundwork to make that happen. That took us a long time, but that is okay. Once it was done, it worked fine.

The first step is migration, making it visible and gaining efficiency. Then, you let it stabilize and clients get it. Phase two might be more automated, having some intelligence with AI for more decision-making.

I did the implementation with a Purview team of eight to 10 people. This included a governance analyst, data analyst, Purview expert, SMA, developer, and functional analyst. I was the overall delivery lead overseeing the effort, then there was a lead on governance.

Clients are happy and seeing the benefits. However, it is too early to determine ROI.

We also evaluated Collibra and AWS.

We haven't explored data loss protection at this point in time because the client has a very specific, in-house utility tool that they wanted to retain for DLP.

Make your case. Do your homework. Know your roadmap, which is critical with Microsoft and adopting Purview. 

I would rate the solution somewhere between an eight and nine out of 10.

Our IT team, data engineering team, and data science team all rely on Microsoft Purview for a unified data repository. We maintain a table for storing sensitive data with segregated access. To readily understand the data types within, anyone can simply leverage Microsoft Purview's classification system. By selecting a specific classification, users gain access to relevant table details.

If we create keys for non-Microsoft data sources, we can leverage Purview's data connector platform to connect and ingest the data.

It is good that Purview takes into account critical regulations from around the world.

Microsoft Purview has greatly improved our organization's ability to view and share permissions with minimal human intervention. Searching for desired information is now a breeze. However, integrating permissions for access in large environments can be a stumbling block. With ten departments, granting access to a single table for one department is straightforward. But when access to multiple tables is required, they must go through the main administrator for verification.

Microsoft Purview shows us compliance in real-time.

Data segregation is the most valuable feature. This provides clear visibility into the hierarchy of data flow, including its destinations, loading points, and table updates.

While Microsoft Purview offers data protection across multi-cloud and multi-platform environments, granting access in such complex settings can be lengthy and expensive.

Every scan we perform incurs a charge, making exploration quite costly.

I would like to have complete video documentation for training.

I have been using Microsoft Purview for six months.

In my experience with Microsoft Purview for our data governance project, I'd rate its stability at a seven out of ten. While it excels during exploration phases with use cases and demos, we encountered some challenges during implementation.

Each time we contact Microsoft support, the support person seems new and has to look into the issue because they've never encountered it before.

Neutral

Deploying initially is simple. It only takes as long as creating a storage account in the Azure portal, which is quick.

Microsoft Purview is expensive.

I would rate Microsoft Purview a seven out of ten.

Our current clients are medium-sized businesses.

In the six months we have been using Microsoft Purview it has not required any maintenance.

Microsoft recently changed the name of this solution. It was previously called Microsoft Compliance Center. Purview has multiple functions, but I primarily use it for records management. I also use the Audit Center for getting audit details about various aspects of the Microsoft 365 platform.

Purview protects against litigation by meeting our compliance requirements and helping us manage the reports. You can realize the benefits once it's set up correctly. Every day, you'll get new audits and inputs from the tool and access the data quite easily. 

The organization didn't have any solution in the first place, so that's a huge challenge. From the perspective of Indian compliance use cases, we see a lot of benefits from Purview's storage. 

This custom solution gives you more power compared to what it used to. Previously, all the other data and SaaS products were running in silos. Having this customized environment and a single pane improves the smoothness of the experience. The visibility has improved greatly in terms of the scalability and elasticity of the content. Purview enables us to demonstrate compliance in real time.

Purview has helped us deal quickly with insider threats because we can implement extended file solutions and see what's happening with raw shared content from various users. We can get a sense of what's being deleted and take action. At least 80 percent of our cases are getting solved.

The audit log has been a lifesaver for a lot of reasons. Historically, when using SaaS products, there were always questions about how the audit was going and whether we were sufficient out of the box. Purview has many capabilities available through centralized reporting that provide a view of a specific segment. 

The audit log capability enables us to observe things like changes in file sizes. At the same time, it simplifies management and control over the entire infrastructure, but it's specifically effective for Microsoft platforms. 

Purview's coverage of multi-cloud environments is essential. In today's world, we cannot stick to a single cloud provider because each one has a different set of benefits and advantages over the other. Many organizations typically try to interconnectivity and a cross-cloud platform, so it makes sense to have a single centralized compliance center and repository where you can track all activity at once. 

You can integrate iOS, Mac, and Android devices and data in other SaaS apps, which is important because we have a plethora of users using various devices across various operating systems. It makes a huge difference to have a centralized data solution for us. Purview natively integrates compliance across Azure Dynamics 365 and Office 365, which is quite important because Office 365 represents the new digital transformation. Purview covers the complete ecosystem, encompassing a lot of use cases and custom applications.

The solution takes into account critical regulations from around the world, which is vital for global organizations operating in countries that each have separate sets of rules and regulations, like GDPR. 

Running eDiscovery once a day takes quite a long time because it has to fetch your data. I also want the eDiscovery results to be improved. At the same time, I would like to get a centralized page where I could see records management applied to my Office 365 tenant visualized instead of waiting for a custom script to run through the complete tenant. 

I want to see how many records there are,  how many files will be affected when we apply a change, and when the next retention cycle is going to run again. It would be helpful to have that integrated into the process.

I have used Purview for around four years now.

Purview is 99 percent stable. 

Purview is highly scalable.

I rate Microsoft support seven out of 10. The response times could be quicker. 

Neutral

We had previously used custom solutions, but Purview is quite effective for the problems we are trying to solve. 

Setting up Purview is straightforward. The deployment steps depend on the features you are using and what you want to target. I don't recall any major challenges setting this up. It takes a couple of engineers.

Purview is reasonably priced. We're working with so much data, and there are many jobs on the back end that might increase the cost, but it isn't a problem right now. 

I rate Microsoft Purview seven out of 10. It's important to consider how your end users will integrate and establish a process for your data.