If you are new to Master Data Management (MDM) you will need to be familiar with the concepts on the page What is Master Data Management?.
YOunite is a robust, configurable federated data integration system with master data capabilities. YOUnite allows an organization to gently transition to the goal of Master Data Management without forcing them into an "all-or-nothing" approach. It provides tools that allow data governance to:
- Describe data models
- Group applications/services into organizational boundries
- Manage access control to the data (governance)
- Decide which applications/services contain master data
- Integrate and transform data between applications/services
YOUnite includes a user-facing tool (YOUnite UI) that gives customers the ability to secure and control data flow both into and out of a company's departments or divisions. YOUnite creates zones to group the resources for a given entity and has the ability to have the zones mirror the company's business structure for a more natural use of the data. For example, an educational institution may have a college district office which has responsibilities over many colleges in their district. YOUnite can create a "parent zone" for the college district office for accessing data across all of its district colleges. And YOUnite could make a "child zone" for each college within that district so that the YOUnite system could secure and control the data flow into and out of that college only. There is more on zones below.
YOUnite addresses the issue of "What is the record of truth?" for a resource in any given context. That source of truth is called a master data record and the resource might be a customer, a product order, a college, or a course. MDM provides multiple points for updating these resources and ensures that the master record is always updated, but allows each zone the ability to determine where those updates are applied. For example, a student address in an application system is updated by the student. YOUnite receives this change and updates the address data record. The college zone's ACLs (determined by the governance rules) will then determine if this updated address is applied to the Student Information System, Learning Management Systems or any other application that stores the student address.
Layer 3 - API Access, Data Access and Notifications
Users and applications can make requests (e.g. governance) and gain data access through the YOUnite API. YOUnite becomes an operation data store when accessing data records through the API.
Notifications allow events to be generated and delivered to legacy applications to trigger business logic. If, for example, an employee is promoted, and the HR system updates the employee's record – the adaptor attached to the HR system can detect the change and pass it on to YOUnite where it can notify other systems that have registered interest in employee status changes.
Layer 2 - Governance
Defines what a zone chooses to share and receive (inbound, outbound and operational ACLs) with other zones and adaptors. For example, the HR Zone may choose to restrict changes it receives (inbound) from a system that is part of the Manufacturing zone or, from all systems in a zone that represents an organization that has been spun off to another subsidiary of the company. Or the HR zone may apply governance ACLs on its own system to prevent personal information from being shared outside of the system (outbound).
Layer 1 - Data Synchronization
The Adaptors makes the connections between YOUnite and the legacy systems in the organization's ecosystems. Adaptors transform, read and write data in and out of the legacy systems. Business logic is generally not part of an adaptor.