In May 2024 we co-hosted “Fabricating the Future: AI Mastery with Profisee MDM and Purview Data Governance” events with Microsoft.
Held at the Microsoft offices in North Sydney (Sydney) and Southbank (Melbourne), we were joined by Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Data Officers, Data Engineers, Data Analysts, Solution Architects and other business leaders.
We explored topics to help Microsoft customers with vision-setting, strategy, roadmaps and organisational alignment. The topics covered were:
- Empowering Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Profisee Master Data Management (MDM)
- Harnessing Microsoft Purview for data governance
- Microsoft Fabric analytics and insights capabilities
- Real-world use cases from organisations leveraging AI, MDM and data governance technologies
We had a light start to the morning, with participants sharing their early encounters with technology and data, or how they use AI. Here were some of their answers:
- Several attendees’ first foray into the world of computing was with the Sinclair ZX81 – a beast of a machine with a whopping 1KB of RAM!
- “Co-pilot has revolutionised my working life. It summarises my Teams meetings and prompts any Actions that have been assigned to me.”
- “I’m enjoying AI and gamification in my Peloton workouts using the Strava app.”
- “We use Excel – it’s a form of AI. You put data in, and it can generate graphs.”
- “I’m producing kick-ass presentations using Gamma AI in seconds!”
We then dived right into the sessions. Read on for some of the key themes covered during the event.
Trends, advancements and thought leadership in AI, MDM and data governance
- Organisations want to bring data into the era of AI – but how?
- “If your data isn’t ready for generative AI, your business isn’t ready for generative AI” – From “The data dividend: Fuelling generative AI” by McKinsey, Sep 2023
- How do we move from data to knowledge at scale and at velocity?
- Who manages the different components in this process, from the IT team to the CDO to line of business users accessing the data?
- AI is democratising data within the enterprise and giving ownership and accountability to the Line of Business users to self-serve their analysis and insights.
The role of Microsoft Purview and data governance
- Your AI is only as good as your data. Your AI potential anchors on people being able to responsibly use your data. It is data governance that makes your data ready.
- Purview enables organisations to govern, manage and catalogue data across disparate sources, ensuring data integrity and compliance.
- Data can’t just be with IT. It’s also about how the organisation uses it and how to make that easy. A key benefit of Purview is it provides a catalogue or glossary. It encourages data stewards to own different data assets in the organisation so they are the points of contact for assets and questions.
- Data governance done well leads to data discovery, curation and management, which leads to data value creating, data understanding, responsible data use, which in turn leads to an impact in analysis
The necessity of Master Data Management
- With the initial wave of AI, it was about getting as much data as possible into the system to build machine learning models and data models. Now, there’s a shift to getting high quality data in to get reliable insights out of it.
- Think of crude oil as a metaphor for data. Crude oil (data) in its raw state doesn’t have energy. You need to get it through the oil (data) refinery where its state and quality gets uplifted so it’s ready for the petrol stations, where cars (end users) can utilise it.
- Profisee is the “refinery” in this case. Within an Azure landscape, Purview and Profisee integrate seamlessly to do this. Purview helps you classify your data – you can set up standards and data quality rules. Profisee is where those standards get enforced, and where the one source of truth – “the golden record” – is created. In this way, Profisee MDM acts as the cornerstone for AI enablement, ensuring data reliability, consistency, and accuracy for advanced AI applications.
Using Microsoft Fabric for analytics and insights
- Microsoft Fabric makes it easy to manage your data estate. You can quickly go from data in the lake to insights that business users can use, with an end-to-end analytics platform.
- Fabric integrates seamlessly with AI, MDM, and data governance solutions to drive innovation, efficiency, and strategic decision-making.
Seamless integration for Microsoft and Profisee MDM
- In Microsoft’s reference architecture, they endorse Profisee as their Master Data Management partner. Profisee was the first and only MDM product integrated with Fabric from day one. It also has native connectivity to Purview, Synapse, OpenAI and more.
- Find out more about the Microsoft and Profisee partnership, and why Profisee is the best MDM for Microsoft enterprises.
For making these events a success, we have many people to thank.
A big thank you to our Microsoft partners especially Benny Austin (Partner Solution Architect) and Chris Olsen (Senior Cloud Solution Architect, Data & AI) for your insights on Microsoft Purview and Microsoft Fabric and how it integrates seamlessly with Profisee MDM.
Also, thank you to our panelists who shared from deep expertise and experience – Andrew Spiegelman (Head of Data and Analytics at Service NSW), Stephen Derrig (Head of Data Management and Engineering at News Corp Australia), Rocco Bagnato (Group Systems Manager at Webjet Limited), Chrisopher Doyle (Senior Manager Enterprise Data Strategy at ASIC), and Ciaran Loughlin (CIO at Baker’s Delight). Not forgetting our team who presented on the day as well – Michael Coyle, Gary Williams and Shibani Rai.
Thank you also to our participants who attended the event and made the conversations more robust. We hope you gained some insights and actionable knowledge to help take your data and AI strategies forward, and if you have any questions, you have our contact details in your inbox.
For more information
If you didn’t attend this event but the topics are of interest to you, please feel free to contact us. This article provides just a high-level summary, but if you’d like to access the notes and discuss details, just drop us a message.