Block Chain for master data management

A system for a single source of truth has been the holy grail of many Master data management solutions and is a critical pillar of many data governance models.

Existing technology solutions and the myriad of tools fall short in many ways. The main challenge seems to be portions of the truth are embedded in applications, and the rules of the business govern the changes to this master data.

The option of establishing a single source of truth outside the applications creates the challenge of managing and coordinating the change across many systems. Most rules to coordinate the change cannot be programmed into existing systems and have to be enforced manually. Existing tooling in this area provides connectors to application sources but cannot resolve conflicting changes to master data. Human intervention is needed.

Most implementations of blockchain as implemented today are slow, cannot scale to support millions of transactions in a day and can be very slow and expensive. However, private Ethereum networks with custom “smart contracts” can potentially eliminate human intervention to resolve conflicts and improve change management. Furthermore, blockchain, with its immutable and distributed properties, can work across organizations as it can also serve as a data exchange mechanism.

• Existing solutions for single source of truth have insurmountable challenges.
• Existing Data Governance processes are manual, costly and error prone.
• Immutability and distributed properties of blockchain make it a natural fit.
• Smart Contracts can be leveraged to automate Data Governance processes.
• Integrating Block chain with existing data governance process is the key.