Overview
With 100,000 employees and $86 billion of net revenue as of June 2014, Microsoft is a worldwide leader in software, services, and solutions. With a vast range of data needs, Microsoft’s Principal IT Data Architect, Aaron Hanks, has faced numerous challenges to support this extensive data environment. Different data architecture solutions had been implemented over time, but it became increasingly clear that a cohesive data management strategy was needed.
Challenge
The lack of clear enterprise data standards at Microsoft fostered extensive variation in how data was modeled across business groups. Additionally, business units at Microsoft had a lot of autonomy and often functioned like small companies of their own. Furthermore, management had become concerned about end-to-end tracking of customer and partner data. The disparity in naming conventions, data definitions, and other compatibility issues made relating such data difficult or unachievable. Because of these extensive requirements, it was clear that Microsoft needed a full-featured enterprise data modeling tool.