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 "zones." A "zone" in YOUnite, is a grouping of resources for a given entity. For example, a college district may have a "parent zone" for accessing data across its district colleges. Each college within that district would have its own "child zone," providing access to data for only that college. 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 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 scope ACLs 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 - Data Access and Notifications
Users and applications can use YOUnite as an operation data store for Data Access.
Notifications events can 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 zones choose to share and receive (inbound and outbound scopes) with other zones and adaptors. For example the HR Zone may choose to restrict changes it receives 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 company.
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.