Ventana Report: Why Centralized Data Governance is Top of Mind

In every industry, real-time data, event-driven systems, and the use of Apache Kafka® have ramped up to the point of being indispensable to business. In fact, streaming data is growing so quickly that 97% of organizations globally now use the technology in some capacity, according to Confluent’s State of Data in Motion Report 2022.

As the use of streaming data continues to grow, it’s essential to manage and govern this data in motion just as we do data at rest. Without centralized governance, streaming data is limited to siloed projects with expert teams and can’t be used more widely throughout large organizations without risk to data quality or compliance.

While data governance has always been important, the rise of data streaming has created a shift in data governance strategy, which was once about blocking access and locking down data, but is now about safely enabling more teams to tap into data as it flows. Matt Aslett, VP and Research Director at Ventana Research, calls this “a holistic approach to the management and governance of data in motion alongside data at rest.”

His recently published Ventana Research Analyst Perspective lends some important context to this topic:

• By 2024, more than half of all organizations’ standard information architectures will include streaming data and event processing
• While Kafka provides a solid foundation for data streaming, the fact that it requires expert operators to self-manage is a barrier for most companies
• While Confluent was originally created to help a wider variety of organizations adapt Kafka, today, it has grown into a mature, robust platform with the advent of Confluent Cloud, a library of pre-built Kafka connectors, stream processing with ksqlDB, Confluent for Kubernetes, and more

One of the biggest areas of focus for Confluent’s research and development right now is data governance. Stream Governance, available on Confluent Cloud, is the industry’s only fully managed governance suite for Apache Kafka® and data in motion. It was made generally available in 2021 and builds on Schema Registry to provide the tools necessary to discover, understand, and trust data streams in the cloud.

To learn more about Confluent’s role in the revolution of data governance, read the report from Ventana Research.