Enterprise Metadata Management: Business-wide integration of ‘data about data’

Enterprise Metadata Management Market

‘Data is the currency of the new world.’ Metadata describing the data and what happens to it has emerged as a vital asset of the modern technology business. Metadata intertwines itself throughout all the data like DNA and serves as the genetic makeup of big data. Metadata holds immense value in unlocking and exploiting valuable enterprise information.

Enterprise metadata management is defined as the process of managing metadata, which helps to provide additional information and data assets of an enterprise or organization. Metadata is the information that reports several facets of the information assets, which enhances its usability and allows smooth management throughout its lifecycle. For example, in a document, metadata is the extra information that describes it, such as the original author, the modified date, the creation date, or the notes that describe the contents of the document. Enterprise metadata management grants complete control and transparency needed to manage the change that often accompanies a complex enterprise data environment. According to a recent research study by Reports and Data, the Global Enterprise Metadata Management Market is forecast to reach USD 17.52 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 23.9%.

Enterprise metadata management and the several software created for it provides management for data integration and allows the users to view the links of metadata. It makes sure that the metadata is available to the users in an effective and efficient way, making data more worthy. A common way of doing this is by collecting and interconnecting metadata from a wide range of data sources so that it can be managed through a central hub. The first step towards managing your data as an enterprise is taking inventory, assessing its value, and expanding its use. Data is highly diverse and segmented across many different locations, departments, and systems – some on the cloud and some on the premises – making it imperative to know exactly where the data you have is stored. Moreover, in the age of big data, it poses an even bigger challenge.

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There are several benefits of Enterprise Metadata Management, like improved governance, integration, and management of the data through a better understanding of the true meaning of information. It reduces risks by avoiding errors and increasing regulatory compliance. It gives a holistic view of the enterprise data across the enterprise or organization. It increases productivity by understanding the impact of specific data changes and allows collaboration between technical and business stakeholders. It helps facilitate increased data flow between different platforms, enable effective governance of enterprise data assets, and upgrade information access through context, among others.

Metadata management tends to make the whole process of building the business lexicon much easier and simpler. Analyzing metadata enables accuracy and holistic descriptions of the terms in the glossary of data through immediate sourcing and identification. Additionally, graphically-rich, interactive tools have also helped users make risk calculations in advance, with an improved understanding of business and financial data, in terms of graphics, which allows the business or enterprise to take optimum measures in real-time.

On the other hand, metadata has also wreaked havoc for many businesses and organizations. Metadata management led to the tactics for search engine optimization. As the digital assets grew, it gave way to the realization that decreasing the search time would help make a workgroup more productive, which would offer increased control and would need compliance requirements, that arrived as part of the more stringent and tightened corporate governance rules. This has led to the increased adoption of taxonomies, content management systems, schema standards, and controlled vocabularies that have the ability to control them.

According to a survey conducted by the TDWI Research, metadata management associates with several desirable outcomes, such as better data sharing across an enterprise, more compliant use of data, faster response to change, and reduced data-related risk.

The major companies in the market are Informatics Corporation, IBM Corporation, Oracle Corporation, Collibra, and ASG Technologies, among others. The focus of the prominent players in the market is towards the development of cloud software to enable the transfer of on-premises applications to cloud and secure the enterprise data in both the environments. It is believed to be accelerating cloud-based deployment in the industry.

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Geographically, North America is expected to constitute the largest market share, followed by Europe. North America houses a majority of the technology industries with a huge operation base. It has also witnessed a prevalent adoption of on-premises and cloud-based data management and governance solutions in most of these industries. North America is forecast to substantially adopt enterprise metadata management solutions, owing to its technological advancements and higher spending on data management solutions, to achieve enterprise goals.

Managed metadata environments and metadata management systems are being used in organizations that assure an efficient and consistent capture, integration, and delivery of metadata. Initiatives taken to execute metadata management in an organization can be a difficult task, and several information systems have evolved their technologies over time to support such kind of environments. Expert studies have used a Delphi research method for identifying the critical success factors of these initiatives. Out of the ten crucial factors nominated in the early rounds, nine factors were considered to be significantly important, and one factor was moderately important. These factors are to be used as the base for the implementation of enterprise metadata management initiatives in businesses.

An effective and efficient metadata management system is one of the key driving forces of the data and information management system, and can significantly help enterprises and organizations bring about improved information quality and efficient data management and governance. The key to modern business success is utilizing metadata to establish data privacy, enhance data quality, and empower business analytics.

Metadata Management is at the forefront of the future of data management.