Data governance and AI are all the rage and that is why, after publishing several Market Guides For this area in recent years, Gartner has just published the first Magic Quadrant y Critical Capabilities for the field of Data & Analytics Governance Platforms.

In these reports, Gartner has selected the 16 vendors most relevant worldwide for this segment and, as could not be otherwise, Anjana Data has been included in the list..

Since our inception in 2019, we have enjoyed many successes, but appearing in a Magic Quadrant (none other than the first one published for such an important segment as Data and Analytics Governance) is not just another success. It represents true recognition of our innovative and disruptive vision, to our differential value proposition, to our work, effort and dedication over the last five years, and everything we once decided to call #GenAnjana.

This recognition places us at the very top of the global data management technology provider industry. Just as it sounds.

It is not very common for this type of world-class reports carried out by analysts for whom the American market is the 90% of the world, a Spanish company slips in, with just over 5 years of existence, whose focus is on the Iberian and Latin American markets where we provide tremendous value, which has no backing whatsoever. Venture Capital nor any Private equity nor any large corporation that finances it, etc. That is why, for us, in addition to rubbing shoulders with the major players at a global level with those we are already competing head-to-head with in Iberia and Latin America, to be one of the small players in a Magic Quadrant It is something tremendously special and something we are extremely proud of.

This recognition is not only a source of pride, but also a testament to the impact of our vision and technology on the market. In this article, we want to explain what these reports mean, why they are important, and how they position Anjana Data.

What are these reports and why are they so important?

The Magic Quadrant it is one of the most recognised reports in the technology industry. Its objective is to provide a clear assessment of the main suppliers in a specific market, using two axes: Capability to Execute (execution capacity) and Completeness of Vision (vision integrity). This results in four categories of providers:

• Leaders: Excellence in both execution and vision.
• Visionaries: Innovators with great vision, but still in the process of consolidating their execution.
• Challengers: Solid in execution, but with a less developed vision.
• Niche Players: Suppliers that excel in specific niches or particular regions.

For its part, the report Critical Capabilities complements Magic Quadrant providing a more technical and detailed assessment of key functionalities from each supplier, evaluating them according to specific use cases such as enterprise control, domain analytics y experimentation.

These reports not only provide a clear view of the market, but also help companies identify the most appropriate solutions for their needs.

Here are the links to the reports, but Please note that you must be a Gartner client to access the content.. Unfortunately, we cannot share it because we do not have authorisation to do so.

• Magic Quadrant
• Critical Capabilities

The Data & Analytics Governance Platforms market according to Gartner

Gartner defines this segment as platforms that offer an integrated set of technological and business capabilities to develop, implement, and monitor governance policies in business systems. These platforms are essential for ensuring that data is reliable, secure and aligned with the company's strategic objectives.

What sets these platforms apart from traditional data management is their focus on policy creation and compliance, rather than policy implementationSpecifically, Gartner distinguishes this field from other areas of data management, such as Data Quality o Master Data Management (MDM), due to its focus on the organisation, control and accountability of data within a business ecosystem.

Data governance not only ensures regulatory compliance, but also builds trust in data and empowers analytics-driven decision-making.. Thus, unlike other markets within data management, data governance focuses on the design, definition and implementation of policies and procedures, as well as ensuring regulatory compliance, delegating more operational and technical aspects to complementary solutions.

The role of data governance is more relevant than ever in a world where organisations handle massive volumes of information and must comply with increasingly stringent regulations, such as GDPR, CCPA, AI Act or the emerging Privacy and Data Protection Laws in Latin America. This context has prompted companies to seek solutions that guarantee robust and scalable data governance.

Our positioning as a niche player

In this first Magic Quadrant from Data and Analytics Governance Platforms, Anjana Data has been included as Niche Player. What does this mean? Essentially, it means that we are a specialised player, with a clear and distinct approach, which excels in specific areas of the market.

In this context, our positioning as Niche Player has a logical explanation:

1. Geographical focus: We are deeply rooted in the markets of Iberia and Latin America, which has limited our global expansion for now, but has also allowed us to be leaders in our region. In this regard, our focus will remain the same in 2025, but we have also already launched some initiatives to gradually enter other European countries.
2. Specialisation in Government: Our platform prioritises governance capabilities, integrating with third-party tools and solutions open-source for functions more focused on Data Management, such as Data Quality, MDM o Virtual Data.
3. Growth phase: We are a scale-up in full expansion, and we are still in the process of achieving our maximum potential.

Our unique selling point

In the markets of Iberia and Latin America, the presence of the vast majority of vendors that appear on the quadrant is considerably reduced. In fact, we almost always find ourselves competing head-to-head with the vendors identified in this quadrant as Leaders in most cases, standing out from them by offering a most innovative and disruptive vision, a more agile, approachable approach and some more flexible capabilities both for different degrees of maturity as to cover the changing needs of organisations.

We recently wrote a article Speaking in detail about this, but summarising it in three points, our clients choose us because we provide:

• Flexibility and customisation: Our platform is designed to start with the most basic use cases but also to quickly adapt to highly complex environments by offering advanced capabilities.
• Localised and specialised support: We understand the needs of the market and our customers more deeply than global giants, and we are able to offer them much more effective and efficient solutions in record time.
• Collaboration and shared vision: Together with our partners, We partner with our clients to support them and develop initiatives that truly add value.

Looking back to look forward again

This recognition coincides with a very successful year-end and marks the beginning of an exciting new phase for Anjana Data. It motivates us to continue expanding our capabilities and increasing our impact in the global market, while continuing to lead in our region.

But this recognition would not be possible without all those who accompany us on this journey. To all of them, THANK YOU!

Thank you to everyone who shares the #GenAnjana.

Thank you to all the Anjaneros and also to those who at some point have been or felt like part of this family, for contributing so much.

We would like to thank our current and future customers and partners for placing their trust in us, but also our past customers and partners for helping us learn along the way.

Thanks to those who put up with us on a daily basis, both professionally and personally, which is no easy task.

Thanks to our investors who have staked their personal wealth accumulated after years of hard work, dedication and effort.

We would like to thank the institutions and organisations, both public and private, and all the professionals and experts who have supported us and continue to support us on this journey.

Thanks to our competitors who make us better every day.

Thanks to the Gartner analysts with whom we have had the pleasure of speaking throughout this time, especially those who have prepared these reports: Guido de Simoni, Anurag Raj, Melody Chien, Stephen Kennedy. And also to those with whom we have shared numerous discussions, such as Saul Judah, Andrew White, Amy Bickel, Lydia Ferguson, Robert Thanaraj, Georgia O'Callaghan, Jason Medd, Christopher Long, Mark Beyer, among others.

And, of course, thank you to everyone in the ecosystem and the Data Management community, from whom we learn a little more every day.

If you would like to learn more about how we can help you transform your Data Governance & AI strategy, please do not hesitate to contact us. This is just the beginning of a great journey!

This article has not used ChatGPT or any other Generative Artificial Intelligence to generate the content but has been produced entirely by a flesh and blood human.

Let us be clear, most of the strategies of Data & AI Governance The new policies promoted in recent years have failed, are failing or will fail.. And it is not only us who say so, but practically all the experts and the most reputable consultancy firms such as Gartner say so in a multitude of their reports.

In 2024, with the explosion and commoditisation of Generative Artificial Intelligence, the need for effective and efficient Data Governance is once again evident and the vast majority of organisations are beginning (or returning) to focus on launching initiatives to design, implement and operationalise data governance strategies. Data Governance, This time accompanied by initiatives from AI Governance.

This once again opens up a huge opportunity for organisations to transform themselves to finally become Data-driven But there is also the possibility that many of them will fail just as others have in the past, or that even those that have already failed will not have learned from their mistakes and will again make a major blunder.

In this sense, what an organisation may need will vary greatly from one organisation to another and that is why the people in charge of these initiatives and who do not have the necessary knowledge or experience to face the challenge with guarantees, work hard to read articles on the internet, train themselves in different subjects, ask experts, talk to consultants and/or manufacturers, ...

Different approaches to the challenge

In one way or another, these organisations usually end up contracting a consultancy project to a company they trust or they directly buy a technological tool, thinking that this will solve the problem.

From our knowledge of the market, what we see is that the vast majority of proposals for such organisations offer one of the following approaches:

1. Basic «Buy» technology approach: It usually consists of the deployment of a complete ecosystem of one of the major Clouds together with a discourse that claims to cover everything necessary with guarantees at an affordable cost (something that common sense would suggest is more than questionable). O platforms all-in-one which rarely give good results and are usually tremendously expensive and complex. In our humble opinion, we consider this strategy to be wrong because it only seeks to purchase technology and also requires high investments (although at first it may seem otherwise, especially given the aggressive discounts that some manufacturers offer for the first year).
2. Advanced «Buy» technological approach: It includes the implementation of benchmarks comprehensive studies in which the following are analysed different market tools from different perspectives, which then lead to the elaboration of a shortlist of finalists with which they intend to carry out one or more PoCs (often without really knowing what they want to test or what the analysed tools are going to be used for). Apart from the fact that we have seen few exercises of this type that are really well focused with a purpose other than «buying technology to solve a problem". automagically In our humble opinion, it is an exercise that does not add any value to the vast majority of organisations because they are not mature enough to be worth the time and effort required.
3. Build« technological approach: It consists of committing to the realisation of developments in software made-to-measure The problem with this approach is that it only serves to justify expenditure and to deliver something that will partially meet the identified needs. The problem with this approach is that it only serves to fulfil short-term requirements and has a very limited ROI. In addition, this approach does not accompany the organisation as it grows in maturity level, so at some point they will be forced to change their strategy as they will not be able to support the investment necessary to maintain and evolve a custom developed software that adapts to their changing needs and a maturity level that grows over time.
4. Traditional consultancy approach: It is the most typical and widespread and basically involves the realisation of a project of «PPT strategic consulting» which includes excessive analysis work for the subsequent preparation of a large number of «paper» deliverables that provide little or no value to the vast majority of organisations that want to have something tangible in a short time (less than 6 months) with which they can get started and from there grow and scale.

Our vision is that the formula has to be different from previous approaches in the vast majority of cases and that is why we are committed to innovative, differentiated and disruptive approaches and we ally ourselves with those who share our values and our philosophy and who also like to be very practical and pragmatic to be able to bring value to their clients without grandiloquent speeches and with much more reality than PPT, but being clear that technology is not an end but a means to face a business challenge.

The reasons to go for a different approach driven by #genAnjana

If you agree with us so far, then we speak the same language, you will understand perfectly what follows and you will ask us how we can help you.

So, here are the 7 reasons why you should consider Anjana Data to successfully implement and operationalise your Data & AI Governance:

1️⃣ We are recognised experts in Data Management, We have many years of REAL experience among our professionals and we don't sell Smoke and Black Magic. Any tools and/or words you've seen out there that contain Data o AI I'm sure we've read and researched about it and even rolled up our sleeves and got down in the mud in real situations, so we can help you demystify false beliefs, unmask the sell-outs, separate the wheat from the chaff and turn your vision into something down-to-earth that has a real impact on your life. tangible business impact.

2️⃣ We are a Product Company and Software Manufacturer, We don't offer professional services or consultancy beyond what is related to our own technology that we design, develop, maintain, evolve and commercialise ourselves, and we don't get involved where we don't contribute something really differential, so we know well what we do. We sell technology but with a purpose, we hate the Vendor Lock-In, We include a lot of documentation and training, we have a Value Proposition business-oriented, disruptive and differential and a Clear pricing model without small print. And because we are a very niche company, in order to reach where we can't reach alone, we have built a Ecosystem and a Community working hand in hand with our partners, we are unique in partners to offer the best possible service to our customers.

3️⃣ Our value proposition, our team, our technology, our positioning and our business model are endorsed by independent experts such as Gartner, the leading Cloud Service Providers (AWS, Google and Microsoft), several of the most cutting-edge and market-leading Software Manufacturers, top-level Consultancies and Integrators and different Associations, Organisations and Institutions in the world of Data and AI. In addition, we are Innovative SME and company GovTech and we have important certifications such as the National Security Scheme.

4️⃣ We know the market inside out and are aligned with the latest trends. (#DataSpace, #DataLakeHouse, #DataFabric, #DataMesh, #DataMarketplace, #AdaptiveDataGovernance, #DataSharingAgreements, #DataContracts, #DataOps, #AIGovernance, #DataEthics, #DataMonetization, ...) and the main frameworks (#DAMA, #UNE, #Gaia-X, #IDSA, ...), standards and regulations (#GDPR, #DataProtectionLaws, #DataAct, #DataGovernanceAct, #AIAct, ...) at a global level to which we also add our philosophy and vision based on our experience. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel, but rather we are trying to apply common sense and we choose to propose solutions that we have seen that work for specific problems, trying to avoid things that do not work, because we have experienced it in our own flesh.

5️⃣ We have been pioneers in the market for a long time and are always at the forefront. in our field of expertise but we are very practical and pragmatic, This gives us a long-term vision while focusing on the long-term goals of the Quick Wins that everyone wants in the short term. We started 2019 with a jaw-droppingly innovative and disruptive discourse that even the biggest players have now embraced almost word for word but that few have yet managed to truly materialise.

6️⃣ We are empathetic, honest, sincere, approachable, agile and flexible. but also tremendously professional and disciplined. Accompanying our clients in achieving their goals is what drives us and we always give a little bit more when it is needed but to be effective and efficient we need to maintain an methodology that we have proven to work, Our values define what we do and what we do not do, based on relationships of trust and avoiding the more traditional, rigid and heavy bureaucracy. Our values define what we do and the #genAnjana is something that if you catch it, you can go a long way.

7️⃣ Our clients and partners, All of them are leading organisations in the field of Data Management, both in the public and private sectors, and they speak for us. They are the most important and the real protagonists of all this, so we always try to get them to talk to each other, to share their concerns, their ideas, their experiences, their mistakes, their learning and their good practices, and thanks to this we can also grow together to improve our formula. We count on numerous real-life success stories that demonstrate that what we preach can be achieved and that the Proactive and Preventive Data Governance is not a utopia but something possible and achievable for any organisation regardless of its level of maturity.

Speaking of real use cases, here are a few examples

If you've made it this far and like what you're reading, it means that you share our vision, and that of our clients and our customers. partners. HOORAY!

At this point you are ready for us to tell you about some of the different use cases that you can implement with Anjana Data Platform.

As you may already know or have guessed from reading this article, organisations around the world, of different industries, sizes and maturity levels, rely on Anjana Data to implement a wide variety of Data Governance & AI use cases aligned with their data strategies.

Following our philosophy of adding value to the business, we identify among our customers different use cases which have been successfully solved thanks to the incorporation of the Anjana Data Platform in its stack technology, considering technological architectures and Data & AI ecosystems of very different natures.

In this sense, it is also important to identify the global requirements of the organisation in order to be able to provide the most appropriate solution approach to meet its business objectives, which may consider multiple technological architectures incorporating different pieces of different vendors which are natively integrated in order to build a fully governed Data & AI ecosystem.

The following is a comprehensive list of different initiatives that have been successfully implemented by our clients:

If you identify one or more of these use cases aligned with your strategy, do not hesitate to write to us, we will be happy to help you.

We are pleased to announce that, thanks to our close strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), We have launched a Free Trial version of our platform in SaaS mode, now available to the public at the AWS Marketplace. This initiative not only represents an important milestone in our journey, but also reinforces our commitment to breaking down the barriers to entry that currently exist for any organisation to implement a advanced Data Governance & AI platform.

What does the Free Trial version include?

The version Free Trial from Anjana Data Platform in SaaS mode allows organisations to experience first-hand all the key functionalities of our platform in an environment sandbox independent and independent. Thus, for a limited period of time, AWS customers will be able to access, free of charge, the full capabilities of Data Governance & AI that our platform offers. This trial version is an exceptional opportunity for any organisation to evaluate how Anjana Data can transform its approach to operationalising its Data Governance & AI Model.

Most notably, thanks to our partnership with AWS, all costs associated with SaaS during this trial period will be covered by AWS. This means that organisations can explore and test the platform without compromising their budget, allowing them to make informed decisions about future technology investments.

Benefits for AWS customers

Anjana Data Platform integration into the AWS Marketplace provides AWS customers with a significant advantage: the ability to rapidly deploy the most innovative and differentiated Data Governance & AI Platform on the market directly from the AWS infrastructure they already use. This not only simplifies deployment, but also ensures that data remains within the secure and trusted AWS environment, complying with the highest security and privacy standards.

The Free Trial version allows organisations to conduct a thorough evaluation of the platform, understanding how Anjana Data Platform aligns with their specific needs and strategic objectives. In addition, the SaaS mode facilitates agile and flexible deployment and greatly simplifies all maintenance and administration tasks, thus reducing the operational burden and allowing organisations to focus on what really matters: extract value from their data.

Professional Services on AWS Marketplace

In addition to the SaaS offering of the Anjana Data Platform, we have also made available on the AWS Marketplace our Professional Services offer in a public way. Through this option, both our customers and our partners can hire bags of hours of expert support from our Customer Success and Global Support teams both for Proof of Concepts (PoCs) and for the implementation of our platform. This offering is ideal for those looking to ensure a smooth and effective transition to a Data & AI driven ecosystem optimised with Anjana Data.

A strategic relationship that enhances value

Our collaboration with AWS is not simply a technology integration; is a strategic alliance that continues to evolve to maximise the value we deliver to our customers. By combining Anjana Data's Data Management & AI expertise with the infrastructure and global reach of AWS, we deliver a unique and powerful value proposition. This synergy allows us to not only offer advanced solutions, but also to tailor them to the specific needs of each organisation, ensuring successful implementation and a clear and measurable ROI.

At Anjana Data, we are committed to our customers' success, and we strongly believe that these new offerings in the AWS Marketplace are an important step in that journey. We invite all organisations interested in improving their Data & AI Governance to take advantage of this opportunity and discover how Anjana Data Platform can transform their Data & AI Strategy.

Start your Free Trial today in the AWS Marketplace and join the new era of Data Governance & AI with Anjana Data and AWS.

What is the ENS and why is it important?

The National Security Scheme (ENS) is a set of principles and requirements necessary to protect the information handled by public administrations in Spain. This scheme ensures that entities operating with the public sector comply with rigorous information security standards.

Obtaining ENS certification is not only a requirement for working with public administrations in Spain, but also represents a seal of trust and assurance for our customers and partners. This certificate demonstrates that Anjana Data complies with the highest security standards, providing a secure environment for data management and processing.

Our commitment to customers and partners

It is important to note that, since Royal Decree 311/2022 came into force on 5 May 2022, the old ENS (RD 3/2010) has been repealed and new updates have been established. The main changes include the revision of the controls in Annex II, the inclusion of new terms, and simpler wording. As of 5 May 2024, it will be mandatory to have the National Security Scheme (ENS) certificate to ensure that any company complies with the required security requirements and can thus participate in public tenders and bids. According to the regulation, suppliers that do not comply with the ENS will not be able to work with the Public Administration in Spain.

For our customers and partners, especially those we work with in the public sector, ENS certification is proof that Anjana Data is prepared to meet their security needs. This achievement not only facilitates collaboration with public administrations, but also reinforces our position as a reliable and secure provider in the data management market.

Strengthening our leadership in the sector

Since our foundation in 2019, we have been working with the Public Administration in Spain and today a large number of important entities in our country place their trust in us, including:

Likewise, many leading professional services companies trust our platform and include it in their catalogue of products and services for the Public Administration in Spain. In this regard, we are proud to work for the public sector in our country alongside companies of the calibre of:

We are also very fortunate to have established strategic alliances with some of the world's leading data management technology manufacturers, which have a significant presence in the public sector in our country, such as:

Thanks to these partnerships, we can complete our unique value proposition and present a value-added offering that is unique in the market.

Achieving this certification reflects the effort and dedication of the entire Anjana Data team. We are proud to comply with the demanding cybersecurity regulations that govern the public sector in Spain, and we are excited to be able to offer our customers peace of mind knowing that their data is protected under strict security measures.

Get in touch with us!

Once again, thank you for placing your trust in Anjana Data!

Anjana Data has positioned itself among customers, consultants and experts as one of the best alternatives to the data governance solutions currently leading the market due to its innovative and disruptive approach. Anjana Data provides organisations with a number of value-added differentiating features while empowering them to implement effective and efficient data governance.

Anjana Data stands out in three ways fundamental pillars, making it the most innovative and disruptive solution for data governance on the market. With a approach collaborative, proactive and preventive government, focused on metadata and agnostic to data processing technologies, a architecture state-of-the-art, scalable and interoperable platform and a revolutionary licensing model With its pay-per-use model, Anjana Data is poised to change the way organisations understand, implement and operationalise their data governance programmes. 

As a product-oriented company, 100% also has a very aggressive roadmap to continuously evolve and expand the capabilities of the solution in each version, as well as to develop native integrations with a multitude of data storage, processing and exploitation technologies in order to implement proactive and preventive data governance as a facilitator of DataOps. This strategy also includes building a broad ecosystem of partners to help customers on their data-driven journey.

In addition to the aforementioned features, to address the current challenges involved in implementing a data strategy within the organisation, Anjana Data relies on value-added features that will provide the necessary tools to empower stakeholders of data within the organisation, enabling them to implement effective and efficient data governance.

In this way, the solution focuses on the HOW rather than the WHAT.

“We believe that a renewed and purpose-driven data governance is possible if we focus not only on WHAT needs to be covered in terms of functionalities but also in HOW These capabilities will be integrated into the organisation's business processes and technological architecture. This change in mindset gives organisations the ability to operationalise data governance, unlocking the full potential and value of their data. – Anjana Data Team.

Today, organisations face many diverse and difficult challenges when it comes to implementing a data-driven strategy. In this regard, there is a new paradigm in which DATA becomes a strategic asset that must be governed in a different way than we were accustomed to.

And it is this difference that allows Anjana Data to be a distinctive data governance solution, capable of implementing governance incrementally and iteratively to enhance synergies between areas within the organisation and maximise the productivity of people who work with data, with a focus on technical process automation, cost savings and information self-service.

So... How do you know? When Anjana Data can assist you with your strategy Changing the government's view of data in your organisation? 

Below are a few examples of cases to look out for:

• The Data Office has failed in its attempt to implement the data governance model within the organisation.
• If data governance is understood as a bureaucracy between stakeholders of data, which requires the automation of governance processes.
• The organisation is seeking a distinctive solution based on interoperability, scalability and non-dependence on suppliers.
• The organisation is concerned about the initial investment, the short-term return on investment, the time to value and the time to market.
• Concepts such as Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, advanced analytics and technologies cloud-native They are seen as «black boxes» by data office teams, business users, and legal and compliance departments.
• The organisation is already working on or is prepared to evolve towards a complex hybrid and multi-cloud architecture.
• There are walls between departments, areas, and data domains.
• The organisation is attempting to implement DataOps real on innovative data platforms with democratic data self-service.
• The Data Office wants to move from “passive governance» to “proactive and preventive governance” of data.
• The Data Office is seeking to centralise access to data and manage its use for different data environments.
• There are many data silos and diverse technologies used within the organisation.
• The aim is to build a Marketplace technology-agnostic data using smart data contracts
• There are barriers between business users and IT teams.

Finally, in addition to all these aspects, it is very important to determine whether or not there is a data culture within the organisation and whether it is necessary to establish collaboration around data. The correct implementation of a data governance framework using Anjana Data will enable the organisation to achieve multiple benefits.

Anjana Data launches its 2.0 version with improved functionalities and new configuration, adaptation and customisation features to implement agile, flexible, proactive and collaborative data governance.

The year 2020 has brought for Anjana Data an evolution in terms of its functionalities and features, both technical and usability, which provide a differential value in the ultimate goal of achieving an effective and efficient Data Governance, necessary to turn data into a strategic asset of any organisation.

Following the same vision and philosophy of the collaborative approach focusing on metadata, In the past, work has been carried out on four main tracks:

• Facilitate the consumption of information by the different stakeholders and expand the capacity for interaction between them with improved usability.
• Make the CORE metamodel more flexible so that it adapts to the needs of the organisation, offering new extension and adaptation capabilities.
• Extend the configuration and maintenance capabilities of the governance model.
• Technology integration with different platforms to offer end-2-end automation and increased interoperability capabilities through APIs.

The following are the new functionalities offered by Anjana Data version 2.0:

UX and UI improvements

With the premise of delivering a version that is easy to use and that fulfils the function of being the central solution for data governance in an organisation, Anjana Data presents improvements in user experience and user interface through substantial changes in different screens of the application such as the Data Portal, object detail views, lineage graphs, workflow management and the Administration Panel. 

The Data Portal includes a more advanced and optimised search engine, dynamic filters, new and more intuitive icons and more condensed information to facilitate the search and discovery of governed data assets. In addition, the solution now allows the visualisation of object properties with different views to adapt to the user's consumption needs and also simplifies the process of mass loading of objects both from Excel and by automatic import using the available connectors or the API.

In relation to the lineage and traceability graphs, new elements are included to facilitate their interpretation, such as the representation of users attached to DSAs, directional arrows indicating the direction of data flow (datasets input >> process/instance >> datasets output) and the differentiation of related process instances from those for solutions.

With regard to the visualisation of workflows, new ways of consuming the information are also available in order to have a global view of the requests, facilitating their follow-up and offering the possibility of having all the detail available at the click of a button.

Finally, to facilitate the configuration and administration of the solution, a new front end is presented from which all the tasks of parameterisation, management and maintenance of the governance model can be carried out graphically. (business areas, roles, users, permissions, workflows, taxonomies, passive vs active governance, connections, parameter catalogues, tags, ...).

CORE 2.0 Metamodel

In the new version, Anjana Data's CORE Metamodel has not only been extended with additional metadata but also now offers the possibility to modify the templates for the different objects. This allows centralising the management of taxonomies and the inclusion of new metadata over time, according to the needs of the organisation.

In addition, users will be able to add specific metadata to individual objects according to their permission settings and predefined catalogues of data types will be available for some fields based on supported technologies and formats.

Active governance and dynamic lineage agnostic to technology and on new platforms natively

Being the only data governance platform that offers active governance and dynamic lineage agnostic to data storage and processing technologies is not easy, which is why this new version of Anjana Data brings with it a new simplified architecture, specifically designed to facilitate interaction with any technology through the use of services and offering in-memory compute capabilities with unlimited horizontal scalability (yes, unlimited, in true Big Data style).

Also, to enable full interoperability and ensure fast and easy integration into any technology scenario, Anjana Data has a new, fully documented, optimised public API layer. This layer has been extended with new functions to offer the full capabilities of Anjana Data to the outside world both inbound and outbound.

In addition, work has continued on native integration with different vendors and technologies such as the entire Cloudera stack (CDH and CDP), any stand-alone Hadoop cluster using technologies such as Sentry, HDFS, Impala, Hive, Spark 2.x, ... and support for all technologies that comply with the JDBC standard (relational databases, mostly both on-premise and in the cloud).

In this way, a solution has evolved that offers the different roles involved a better working dynamic and optimal metadata management that facilitates the extraction of business value and decision making.

The future of Anjana Data

This new version offers our customers a major leap in quality but, of course, we are already developing the next version which will be launched in April this year, what will we find in this next version?

• New native integration capabilities with different platforms and technologies, which we will announce as we close the corresponding partnership agreements that we are in the process of negotiating.
• The new jewel in the crown, a module for the State-of-the-art Business Glossary, fully flexible and configurable to adapt to the semantic vision of any organisation, but 100% connected to our central metamodel, offering the possibility of a complete data journey both top-down and bottom-up.
• Dynamic forms advanced tools for template management and object composition.
• Redesign of some interfaces and inclusion of UX and UI improvements with the aim of making Anjana Data's web application increasingly simple and intuitive and favouring the interaction of different types of roles and users.
• And, the icing on the cake, care capacities for some functionalities, thanks to the analysis of user behaviour and the inclusion of advanced analytics algorithms in the background. What everyone likes to call “Artificial Intelligence” and “Machine Learning”.

Anjana Data is constantly evolving, developing an innovative and disruptive solution that aims to help organisations turn data into a strategic asset of great value to the business, implementing a collaborative model focused on unified metadata management and involving different roles with their functions, rights and responsibilities, from business areas to IT departments, including cross-functional teams. 

The new technological era has created the need to implement a governance framework that promotes the democratisation of data and the implementation of a data culture in organisations. This requires the development of a holistic solution adapted to these new technological paradigms in companies, offering differentiation and advances in its use aimed at generating value for the business. 

So, What makes Anjana Data?. We mention below the 3 distinguishing pillars of our solution:

• Focus: Our vision of data governance as a collaborative approach focused on metadata.
• Architecture: Native Big Data, modular and service-oriented, using consolidated open-source technologies, which provides significant advantages over more traditional solutions (scalability, interoperability, adaptability, flexibility, etc.).
• Pricing and licensing model: No user limits, scalable and flexible, also attempting to break vendor lock-in.

Anjana Data's collaborative and interactive approach

As for our government vision, The idea behind using Anjana Data is to assist the Organisation. in the implementation of proactive and preventive data governance This will enable centralised management of metadata using a single, common language, allowing us to control the impact of changes, access to information, etc. Furthermore, using Anjana Data as a «single source of truth for governance» will enable us to detect ungoverned processes, datasets with incorrectly declared metadata, unauthorised access, etc. occurring in controlled environments.

Within this approach, Anjana aims to build bridges between Business and IT, bringing data closer to decision-making and enhancing the Governed self-service of quality data. To this end, Anjana Data proposes promoting a data culture extended throughout the organisation with the implementation of Agile, flexible procedures adapted over time. 

That said, our goal with Anjana Data is to provide the possibility of automate all technical processes as much as possible underlying data governance, for which Anjana Data has 4 types of integration with different platforms/systems/databases/technologies data storage, processing and exploitation:

• Extraction of declarative metadata (business, technical, and operational): Ability to extract metadata from databases and upload it to Anjana Data as datasets.«
• Static lineage (relationships between objects): Ability to interpret processes and executions at rest (ETL, engines, scripts, etc.) and load them into Anjana Data as «processes» and «instances».
• Active government:
  • Permission management: Ability to automate the generation of permissions (ACLs, grants, etc., at user/group level).
  • Modification of data structures: Ability to automate the creation, modification, and deletion of data structures (e.g., tables).
• Dynamic lineage (audit metadata): Ability to retrieve and interpret platform audit logs to find out which processes have been executed, which user launched them, when they started and ended, and which datasets were involved (e.g., tables read and written by the process). We can then cross-reference this information with the objects governed by Anjana Data (datasets and processes) to obtain a history of what has been executed for each one and also to detect items that are not governed and therefore cannot be cross-referenced (ungoverned processes/datasets, metadata inconsistencies, unauthorised access, etc.).

Modular, service-oriented architecture

Anjana Data's architecture has a central metamodel agnostic to data storage and processing technologies, flexible and scalable, is interoperable and adaptable to any technological scenario. Its functionalities are highly configurable to easily implement and operationalise the solution with the governance model implemented in the business.

Anjana Data as a technological solution is defined by the following characteristics aligned with its components: open-source pointers and consolidated:

• Configuration and flexibility Most of Anjana Data's capabilities and functionalities can be configured from an administration front end to adapt the solution to the defined governance model and can also be modified over time.
• Interoperability through API >> We provide an API layer to interact with Anjana Data (internal repositories and functionalities) in both read and write modes, allowing integration into any technological scenario without the need for our involvement, as the entire API is documented (avoiding vendor lock-in).
• Native integration >> As part of our roadmap, we develop connectors and methods for native integration with different platforms and technologies, focusing primarily on Big Data and Cloud, which is where the greatest complexity lies and where we are highly differentiated. Some of these integrations are already in production, and we have partnerships with leading technology vendors.

Licensing and pricing model

In line with our philosophy and in an effort to adapt our business model to the latest trends, the Anjana Data licensing and pricing model is based on flexible and scalable pricing designed for clients of various sizes and sectors, whether they may have the initial need to implement data governance from scratch in their organisation or for those who already use other technologies and require integration to achieve effective governance. Our model is divided into two main parts:

• Initial implementation cost. With this, we want to offer our customers a comprehensive and reliable implementation, including infrastructure and architecture assessment, deployment of all services in production, configuration of the solution based on your governance model, and initial training for immediate use. This will reduce time-to-market and time-to-value.
• Flexible annual licence based on the number of governed objects. This part also includes all solution updates, basic remote support (via ticketing tool) and access to the Customer Portal (with all useful documentation available and visibility of the Roadmap).

This pricing model from Anjana Data also has several licensing levels depending on the number of objects to be governed. The tiers are designed to cover everything from companies with smaller data needs to large multinational corporations that need to proactively govern their data to extract value for the business. For this reason, Anjana Data adapts to the organisation's needs so that no large initial investment is required, allowing short/medium-term control of the resulting ROI at all times.

Would you like to see how these three pillars converge at Anjana Data? We'll show you a demo! 

Since 2016, investment in Artificial Intelligence (AI) by organisations has grown exponentially, and this trend is expected to continue over the coming years. However, almost 75% of AI initiatives fail to achieve their objectives, and more than 90% of these types of projects report serious problems with the raw material that feeds them: data.

This becomes a vicious circle: I invest in AI, but I don't achieve my goals because I don't have effective and efficient data governance, but I can't invest everything I need in data governance because AI projects are allocated a larger budget than data governance projects.

And how can this vicious circle be broken?

We have three clear examples of organisations that are attempting to do this (and largely succeeding):

• Organisations that are digitally native or whose business is data, which have a data culture in their DNA and, therefore, data governance is part of their day-to-day operations and evolves as business and technological scenarios advance. The problem is that few organisations are in this situation and, in general, they tend to be small and medium-sized enterprises.
• Organisations that have been forced to implement data governance due to regulatory requirements (especially banks and financial institutions) and, in addition, have had sufficient budget to carry out mammoth initiatives, with a huge outlay of money and a surely negative ROI. It doesn't seem to be within everyone's reach, does it?
• Organisations that entrust one of their strategic assets, such as data, to a single provider that is “capable” of covering the entire data lifecycle with proprietary solutions. Not only does this result in high-value, long-term contracts and licences, but, as with all outsourcing, they are losing control of that part of the business by leaving it in the hands of a third party.

Our vision at Anjana Data

The above groups are all well and good, but the reality is that they cover a very small percentage of the current business fabric. What if we created a new group that included the vast majority of organisations not represented in the previous ones? Could we fill those gaps with distinctive, innovative and disruptive solutions?

In Anjana Data We believe so, which is why we are working on the application of AI, but with a focus entirely geared towards promoting a data culture within organisations and the effective and efficient implementation of data governance that guarantees the success of data exploitation initiatives. The impact is particularly high in initiatives as sensitive to data quality as AI.

Furthermore, if we think about it carefully, we would be covering several fronts at once, as we would be carrying out the different tasks in parallel:

• AI implementation proof of concept: Even if they do not have directly measurable business objectives, the learning, results and methodologies can still be useful.
• Incremental implementation of data governance, resulting in a direct improvement in data culture in order to have more and better comprehensible and reliable data that will subsequently feed into our AI initiatives.
• Dedication of the talent and knowledge of key people to a single goal, rather than returning to a vicious circle.

Applying AI... wouldn't you have the same problem with raw materials?

Yes, but to a lesser extent. The raw material I will need initially for these initiatives is metadata., which are divided into:

• Technical: Extracted from systems and databases. They are usually completely reliable as they define the characteristics of the data at a technical level. The biggest problem they pose is their abstraction, standardisation and understanding.
• Operational: Extracted from processes and their execution. Often, acquiring this information is not as straightforward as we would like, and sometimes we may encounter situations where we lack information in this regard. However, as a general rule, and increasingly so, its presentation is being standardised to facilitate its capture and understanding.
• Business: These exist in people's minds, and if they have ever been digitised, they will also exist in some repository from which they can be extracted. They are the most complex and also the most valuable, but they are also the easiest to obtain thanks to the continuous learning of AI algorithms.

AI at Anjana Data

I'm sure by now you're wondering... And what AI applications is Anjana Data beginning to implement to assist me with my data governance initiatives? We can't give away too many spoilers yet (because of the competition), but we can give you a few hints:

• Improved experience in searching for both business and technical objects with proposals based on user interaction. Similar to what the most powerful search engines do.
• Suggestions for objects and elements that may be of interest based on your use of the application, for example, to request access to data. Similar to the shopping experience on e-commerce platforms.
• Inference and suggestion of business terms and metadata thanks to Natural Language Processing, pattern detection and relationships between objects.
• Discovery of relationships between objects (trace, lineage) based on similarity detection algorithms and Euclidean distance measurement.
• Intelligent detection of Golden Sources and Golden Records based on metadata, data quality, and user data usage, as well as critical and/or hot data.
• Detection of duplicate or similar objects and/or elements and proposal for improvement of data structures (location, data model, performance, partitioning, etc.) based on the use of data by users and processes.
• Detection of bottlenecks in internal governance procedures and predictive recommendations for their improvement.
• Identification of misuse of data based on specified licence terms and actual use of the data.
• Identification of anomalies in data processing based on the usual behaviour of the monitored platforms.

As you can see, at Anjana Data we want to offer our customers truly distinctive, innovative and disruptive capabilities within our Data Governance solution, which is why we encourage you to learn about our solution, its current status, and where we are headed.

Do not just think about the present; bear in mind that the future is just around the corner.

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** You can also read this article in the print edition. No. 2 of Big Data Magazine