Perforce Delphix for Microsoft: Simplifying Compliance with Azure Data Factory

Perforce Delphix empowers organizations to unlock the full potential of their data by ensuring its security and compliance. They offer a comprehensive data management platform that simplifies data delivery, virtualization, and masking, particularly for development, testing, and analytics purposes.

Delphix Compliance Services (DCS) integrates seamlessly with applications like Microsoft Fabric, specifically Azure Data Factory (ADF), to automate data compliance and masking within your cloud data workflows. Delphix also helps to eliminate data flow bottlenecks by integrating compliance within Azure ETL processes.

This collaboration tackles a major challenge for businesses in the cloud: ensuring data privacy and regulatory compliance while enabling efficient data movement and utilization. The blog delves deep into the data and AI challenges addressed by Delphix and Azure and the potential benefits for citizen users as well as enterprises.

Key Capabilities

With Delphix, you can perform Automated Data Masking, transforming sensitive data into realistic yet fictitious values and protecting privacy without compromising data usability for analytics or development. You can also perform incremental masking, updating only changed data for faster refresh cycles, which is particularly beneficial for sources supporting Change Data Capture (CDC).

Some of the key features of masking include:

• Data Realism and Referential Integrity: Masked data retains its original structure and relationships, ensuring accurate analysis and consistent functionality across various environments.
• Extensive Masking Algorithm Library: Delphix offers a wide range of pre-built masking algorithms, along with the flexibility to create custom algorithms for specific needs.
• Version Control: Manage and track different versions of masked data for development and testing purposes. Additionally, Delphix enables data subsetting during masking for reduced data volume, making it cost-effective and time-saving.

Challenges Addressed in Data and Analytics

Data is the new corporate currency. Every industry faces challenges with managing their data estates in some form or the other.

According to Forbes, in 2024, roughly 2.5 quintillion bytes worth of data will be generated each day, with over 44 zettabytes of data in the entire digital universe. Those figures are expected to grow even larger with the mainstream adoption of generative AI (GenAI).

In such a scenario, Delphix can substantially help industries tackle the following data and analytics challenges:

• Compliance Bottlenecks: Manually managing data compliance can hinder data movement and slow down innovation. Delphix automates compliance within Azure data flows, eliminating these bottlenecks.
• Data Silos: Breaking down data silos often requires complex data manipulation and adapting ETL pipelines to various systems. Delphix simplifies data integration while maintaining compliance.
• Security Risks: Moving sensitive data across environments creates security vulnerabilities. Delphix masking anonymizes data, mitigating these risks.

Why Perforce Delphix for Azure?

Perforce Delphix enables frictionless data movement by seamlessly integrating compliance within your data pipelines, accelerating data movement and innovation. Its masking algorithms preserve data meaning, ensuring accurate and reliable analytics on compliant data. Delphix maintains consistent masking across all cloud environments (PaaS, SaaS, and on-premises) for seamless data integration. Additionally, it offers pre-built masking algorithms to comply with major privacy regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA, ensuring regulatory compliance.

Simplifying Compliance with Azure Data Factory

Delphix and Azure for Test Data Management (TDM)

Delphix Compliance Services (DCS) integrates directly with Azure Data Factory (ADF). Here’s a simplified breakdown of the process:   Select Source and Target: Utilize pre-built templates to choose data sources and destinations, leveraging ADF’s extensive data connector library (including SaaS and PaaS databases). Define Compliance Rules: Configure data masking rules within the ADF or Azure Synapse interface. Choose from Delphix’s robust library of out-of-the-box algorithms or create custom ones. Run Data Flow for Delivery: Execute the ADF data flow to mask data before delivering it to the designated target. The masked data retains multi-cloud referential integrity and functionality for accurate analysis or development tasks.

Delphix acts as an API-first data platform for Azure transformations, enabling faster and more compliant data delivery for various TDM purposes:   Cloud Proof-of-Concepts (POCs): Utilize compliant data to fuel secure cloud POCs, minimizing risk during validation stages. Azure Migration: Reduce migration timelines to Azure IaaS and PaaS by up to 30% by eliminating the need to move non-production environments. Continuous Compliance: Ensure ongoing compliance with data privacy regulations by masking sensitive data throughout your cloud journey. Cloud-Based Dev/Test: Automate data delivery within Azure DevOps workflows, accelerating software release cycles. Hybrid and Multi-Cloud: Delphix facilitates efficient data and application migration across various cloud environments.

 

Perforce Delphix and Microsoft: A Powerful Collaboration and its Benefits

The strategic partnership between Perforce Delphix and Microsoft brings significant value to large enterprises. It offers a seamless and efficient way to achieve multi-cloud compliance while unifying the data estate for analytics.

Here are some key highlights:

• Code-Free Experience: Delphix integrates seamlessly with existing Microsoft tools, providing a user-friendly, code-free experience for data masking configuration.
• Built-in Data Governance: Delphix reinforces data governance within your existing Microsoft infrastructure.
• Out-of-the-Box Integrations: Leverage pre-built integrations with popular Microsoft solutions like Azure Data Factory and Azure Synapse Analytics for a smooth implementation.

Benefits for Developers, Data Professionals, and Citizen Users

• Pre-Built Masking Algorithms: Delphix provides pre-configured masking algorithms for major privacy regulations, eliminating the need for users to become compliance experts.
• Consistent Data Protection: Once configured, masking rules are applied automatically, ensuring consistent data anonymization across all data flows.
• Multi-Cloud Referential Integrity: Consistent masking across environments ensures data integrity for seamless integration and analysis.

Benefits for the Enterprise

The combined solution of Delphix and Microsoft Fabric empowers enterprises with several key advantages:

• Unified Data Estate: Leverage Microsoft Fabric to unify your data landscape for analytics while ensuring compliance through Delphix masking.
• Streamlined Innovation: Automate data compliance, removing a significant barrier to innovation and accelerating business insights and AI/ML adoption.
• Faster Time to Market: Deliver new features and functionalities quicker by reducing compliance hurdles associated with data movement.

Final Thoughts

This combined solution from Delphix and Microsoft empowers enterprises to unlock the true potential of their data in a secure and compliant manner. It simplifies data masking, streamlines data movement, and fosters a data-driven culture for innovation and competitive advantage. With its comprehensive capabilities and ease of use, this solution is ideal for organizations looking to leverage data for maximum benefit while adhering to all relevant regulations.

LevelShift is a global technology solutions provider that offers data modernization and data integration services such as Enterprise Application Integration, Application Modernization, Cloud Migration, Business Intelligence, Data Analytics, CRM/ERP Business Application Services, Software Testing, and Business Process Services, that are designed to empower businesses with advanced technologies and insightful decision-making tools.

 As Perforce Delphix partner, we also specialize in Delphix data governance services, which includes GDPR compliance consulting services. Working with startups and established organizations, we leverage our technical expertise, industry experience, technology partnerships, and global delivery model to drive business value and productivity.