Modern KM tools and techniques for collaboration
The data mesh architecture has also arisen as a credible means of cultivating enterprise collaboration while prioritizing certain aspects of the decentralization inherent in most contemporary organizations. Data mesh design principles are focused on creating reusable data products in which there is local ownership, curation, definitions, and data modeling supplied by individual business units. A popular notion of late, however, is that “data mesh and data fabric are not exclusive,” Zwicker commented. Data mesh architecture enables the creation of departmental data products. When organizations want to query, search, or perform text analytics across data products, they can readily link them together into a comprehensive data fabric.
The data mesh notion typifies organizational collaboration by allowing different departments to curate their knowledge and accompanying documents, then make them available to users from different departments or parts of the organization. In this respect, it operates on multiple levels, including “the team level, the domain level, and the global level,” Zwicker pointed out. The global level is the enterprise level in which the data fabric concept is invoked. Business units create data products at the domain level. The team level is the most parochial level of collaboration in which there are documents, knowledge, or data “that may apply to a single table or data source,” Zwicker commented. Frameworks that provide visibility into the access at each of these layers are ideal for data mesh implementations. The result is an enhanced capacity for “data democracy to facilitate organizations sharing the right information with the right people at each of these levels,” Zwicker reflected.
The new reality
Modern collaboration means and mechanisms ultimately make it easier, less risky, and more productive for organizations to work together within business units, between them, and between organizations. Constructs such as data mesh architecture, data fabric architecture, data access governance platforms, data catalogs, and process automation solutions are based on sharing information between parties—and make doing so tenable.