Pronunciation

A metaphor for data which is important to the business as a whole but which is stored separately by departments, held by different regions or even saved by individuals in a way that makes it inaccessible to the wider company.

The comparison is meant to draw attention to how data can be located within different parts of a business that have no communication or connection to each other. Like a tall, freestanding yet windowless silo, data silos mean that anyone not familiar with what is inside cannot see the grains of data or access them from the rest of the farm. This can cause the workflow to slow down while the data is located and transferred to the department that needs it or prevent access altogether. Data silos can also result in multiple sets of information, some of which might fall out of sync with each other. Master Data Management programs are often implemented to help ameliorate this issue.

Data Governance