Teradata Launches New ‘DataDNA’ Data Forensics Tool

Nov 16, 2020 | San Diego

New as-a-service offering automates discovery of cross-platform data lineage so customers can better understand data flow and utilization across their entire data analytics ecosystem

Enables simplified and accelerated migration to the cloud

Teradata (NYSE: TDC), the cloud data analytics platform company, today announced the availability of Teradata DataDNA – an automated service that produces data lineage and usage analytics. Using the power of Vantage, the company’s flagship hybrid multi-cloud data analytics software platform, DataDNA delivers transparency into an organization’s data assets and their utilization across the ecosystem, regardless of platform or technology, to ensure maximum analytic value is being derived throughout the enterprise. By giving businesses full insight into their data – including whether data is used, how it is used, and by whom – DataDNA enables customers to use data as their greatest asset, eliminating data redundancy, reducing cost, accelerating data integration, assisting in regulatory compliance, and increasing the return on investment.

Delivered by Teradata or one of its strategic integration and consulting partners, DataDNA also becomes an indispensable tool as companies migrate to Vantage in the cloud – helping them understand the interdependencies of their systems, data usage, and data flow, so they can make informed decisions on which applications to move, consolidate and simplify for their new cloud ecosystem.

“At Teradata, we have a deep understanding of analytic ecosystems and how data flows through an organization. That’s why we’re leveraging our expertise to help our customers better understand and manage their data assets across any platform,” said Niels Brandt, Vice President, Customer Success & Consulting at Teradata. “By automating data management, our customers will reduce their reliance on IT specialists for repetitive and low impact data management tasks; thereby releasing their productive time for increased collaboration, training and high-value services. And as more of our customers move to Vantage in the cloud, DataDNA provides insight to support ecosystem simplification and helps to identify data dependencies for accelerated migration plans and activities.”

DataDNA is an as-a-service offering that is customized for individual Teradata customers. By delivering this automated view into data assets -- including their usage and cross-platform data lineage -- DataDNA generates rapid new insights that improve new and existing business use cases by:

Simplifying IT ecosystems and reducing associated costs;
Eliminating data duplication;
Providing self-service business insights;
Ensuring efficient and fact-based data governance;
Guaranteeing data quality;
Reconciling data and processes across platforms; and
Generating automated and accurate change impact analysis.

The demand for automated data management has increased dramatically in recent years as data proliferation has accelerated, creating a need for services and solutions that help companies understand their vast data ecosystems. With DataDNA, the insights into what systems do with data, and who is using that data, are derived from metadata. This makes the service much less invasive and the footprint much lighter, so that no intensive system processing is required.

According to Gartner’s Top 10 Trends in Data and Analytics, May 11, 2020, “By 2023, organizations utilizing active metadata, machine learning and data fabrics to dynamically connect, optimize and automate data management processes will reduce time to integrated data delivery by 30%.” This enables companies to leverage more of their data, faster, to gain rapid analytic insights.

Gartner also asserts in the Magic Quadrant for Metadata Management Solutions, October 16, 2019, by analysts Guido De Simoni, Mark Beyer, and Ankush Jain, that “Metadata supports understanding of an organization's data assets, how those data assets are used, and their business value. Metadata management initiatives deliver business benefits such as improved compliance and corporate governance, better risk management, better shareability and reuse, and better assessments of the impact of change within an enterprise, while creating opportunities and guarding against threats."

A complete list of DataDNA’s features include:

Automated Data Lineage: Understand how data moves across the enterprise, at a column level, based on facts.
Automated Data Usage Analysis: Understand who uses what data, when, and how. This can assist with clean up, decommissioning, PII data analysis, and regulatory compliance.
Data Asset Catalog: Ability to identify the data that is an asset to an organization along with who uses the data – for data monetization purposes, data as a service, etc.
Business Glossary Management: Helps companies build or manage business glossaries by linking the business glossary terms to the physical lineage from which the data arrives.
Subject Area Fingerprinting: Understand the subject areas that are being used in IT environments and support Cloud migration use cases, duplication analysis, and much more.
PII identification: Identify where PII data is stored and how it moves across an environment, using metadata. This light touch approach significantly reduces the system and human resources required to identify where PII data is held and who accesses it.
Impact Assessment: With the touch of a button, run an impact assessment report to determine what impact a change will have across an entire connected lineage.

Availability

Teradata’s DataDNA is available globally, today.

At Teradata, we believe that people thrive when empowered with trusted information. We offer the most complete cloud analytics and data platform for AI. By delivering harmonized data and trusted AI, we enable more confident decision-making, unlock faster innovation, and drive the impactful business results organizations need most. See how at Teradata.com.