A Journey Towards Unified Data Governance at bp
bp
bp implemented Databricks Unity Catalog to unify data governance across data previously spread across disparate systems, migrating over 270 Databricks workspaces from two separate data hub platforms and 15 standalone instances, serving 10,000+ users across Finance ERP, Customer and Products, Production and Operations, and Enterprise business entities. The migration, run in four phased quarters, delivered centralized governance, granular row/column-level access control, and automated column-level data lineage and audit logs. bp expects the consolidation to save nearly $1 million annually plus roughly $4,000 weekly by eliminating manual Overwatch job management, and the migration unlocked Delta Sharing, SQL Serverless Warehouses, and further AI features like model serving and fine-tuning.
Overview
bp implemented Databricks Unity Catalog to unify data governance across data previously spread across disparate systems, migrating over 270 Databricks workspaces from two separate data hub platforms and 15 standalone instances, serving 10,000+ users across Finance ERP, Customer and Products, Production and Operations, and Enterprise business entities. The migration, run in four phased quarters, delivered centralized governance, granular row/column-level access control, and automated column-level data lineage and audit logs. bp expects the consolidation to save nearly $1 million annually plus roughly $4,000 weekly by eliminating manual Overwatch job management, and the migration unlocked Delta Sharing, SQL Serverless Warehouses, and further AI features like model serving and fine-tuning.
The challenge
bp faced challenges typical of large enterprises dealing with vast amounts of data spread across various systems and platforms: lack of centralized oversight made it difficult to enforce consistent data governance policies, discoverability and visibility of dataset ownership took time and led to concerns about data provenance accuracy, and ensuring compliance with stringent data protection laws such as GDPR and industry-specific regulations was complex.
The solution
bp implemented Databricks Unity Catalog to unify data governance, migrating over 270 Databricks workspaces from two separate data hub platforms and 15 standalone instances, serving over 10,000 users across Finance ERP, Customer and Products, Production and Operations, and Enterprise business entities. The migration ran in four phased quarters (pilot migrations, early adopters, first majority, remaining workspaces), prioritizing business-critical tables, using a flexible data integration approach aligning data with bronze, silver and gold layers over time, and an automation-first approach to manage the long tail of data consumers.
Reported business value
The migration delivered centralized governance, granular row/column-level access control, and automated column-level data lineage and audit logs. bp expects the consolidation to save nearly $1 million annually, plus roughly $4,000 weekly by eliminating manual Overwatch job management, and it unlocked Delta Sharing, SQL Serverless Warehouses, and further AI features like model serving, fine-tuning and vector databases.
Sources
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