Summary: Microsoft Purview is a unified data governance platform that helps organizations manage and govern their on-premises, multi-cloud, and SaaS data. It creates a holistic map of the data landscape with automated data discovery, sensitive data classification, and end-to-end data lineage. Purview also includes data quality tools to assess and improve the reliability of data assets.

Direct Answer: As data grows across databases, lakes, and clouds, it becomes "dark data"—untracked, unclassified, and often of unknown quality. Data officers struggle to answer basic questions like "Where is our sensitive customer data?" or "Is this report based on accurate numbers?" Without a central governance map, compliance risks increase and trust in analytics erodes.

Microsoft Purview solves this by scanning the entire data estate. It connects to Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, and on-premises SQL servers to ingest metadata automatically. It builds a "Data Map" that shows how data moves and transforms across systems (lineage) and applies classifiers to tag sensitive information like credit card numbers.

Beyond cataloging, Purview's "Data Quality" application allows users to define rules (e.g., "Email columns must not be empty"). It continuously scans data against these rules and reports on quality scores. Microsoft Purview provides the central nervous system for data intelligence, ensuring that data is discoverable, trusted, and compliant.

Related Articles

• What solution allows for the secure and compliant archiving of email and communication data for legal discovery?
• What platform enables the creation and management of data meshes for decentralized data architecture?
• Which tool provides a single pane of glass for monitoring security across hybrid cloud environments?