Widespread adoption of self-service visualization and analysis tools like Tableau, Qlik and Spotfire, along with the acceleration of big data adoption, are driving increased demand for data preparation.

This new data preparation trend is so pervasive that at Gartner's BI and Analytics Summits, Gartner provides a dedicated data preparation session entitled "The Next Big Market Disruption: Self-Service Data Preparation."

Meeting Business and IT Needs

Based on their success with self-service visualization / analysis, many enterprises are allowing business users to support themselves with self-service data preparation tools as well. Cisco's recently announced Cisco Data Preparation is one example.

But not all self-service data preparation tools are created equal. Users demand self-service data preparation solutions that are easy for them to use and adopt so they can get results quickly and drive business impact. So ease-of-use and agility, along with widespread access to any and all data are key business requirements.

However, with big data analytics so key to organizational success, IT also has a seat at the data preparation decision table. Regardless of the tool selected, IT needs to ensure these critical data preparation activities occur in with appropriate data governance.

What Does Data Governance Really Mean?

Simply put, data governance allows one to answer three simple questions about any data in any report or analysis, with 100% confidence.

• Where did the data came from?
• How was it transformed or prepared?
• Who did the work?

When the answers to these questions are clear, the organization can be more confident in their analysis. And thus use the insights gained to drive better business results.

However, when these answers are not clear, other questions naturally arise.

• How confident should an organization be in the insights that arose from this "sketchy" data?
• Should it just "go for it" because something is better than nothing?
• Or should it insist on proper governance and eliminate this avoidable business risk?

Cisco Data Preparation Integrates Data Governance

Cisco Data Preparation was engineered to address this governance requirement from the start. Each and every data preparation activity performed by a business analyst is tracked, so there is never a question of where the data came, how it was prepared, or who did the work.

Cleverly, this tracking occurs transparently, behind the scenes. So business analysts can explore, transform and enrich data based on their skills and business acumen, with governance an automatic by-product.

And as a result, Cisco Data Preparation increases confidence in the data as well as the resulting analysis and insights. And thus enables the better business outcomes that everyone is seeking.

Learn more about Cisco Data Preparation

For a quick introduction to Cisco Data Preparation, check out the less than 90 second video.

And for further drilldown, view the Cisco Data Preparation Data Sheet.  It includes a summary of all the capabilities including the ones that enable data governance.

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