Federated Governance in a Nutshell
In short, federated master data governance is an alternative to fully centrally-managed master data governance. In a federated approach, a network of systems interact in governing master data with a core data owner (managing data centrally) and various application data owners (managing data de-centrally) to make sure that data is governed where it is best understood. In a recent blog post, I described the benefits of federated governance with SAP Master Data Governance on SAP S/4HANA acting as a core data owner in such a set-up (which is possible as of SAP S/4HANA 2023). In this initial delivery, all participating systems (core data owner and application data owners) must run on SAP S/4HANA 2023.
Easy Consumption of Federated Governance
With SAP S/4HANA 2023 FPS01 we have increased the possibilities to include SAP S/4HANA systems as application data owners in a federated governance scenario. Organizations who plan to go for a federated approach but cannot update all participating application data owners (ADO) to the required SAP S/4HANA release can now also integrate lower SAP S/4HANA releases running classic central governance processes (based on MDG change requests). Only the system, which acts as core data owner (CDO) must run on SAP S/4HANA 2023 FPS01 or higher.
Besides the configuration of the core data owner system, which is described in the configuration guide, there
are several custom enhancements for the application data owners that are required to get federation
running. A new how-to guide outlines all the required configurations and enhancements.
With this innovation, we have dramatically lowered the entry barrier for organizations who plan for federated governance: they are not forced to update all participating application data owners, and they can continue with classic (change-request based) central governance.
As pointed out various times before, federated governance is not a must, but it can be an alternative to centrally managed governance for organizations that have several SAP S/4HANA systems in their landscape. I'd also like to reiterate that the cloud-ready mode in MDG is a prerequisite for the core data owner in federated scenarios, but this operation mode is also useful in centrally managed scenarios, where it facilitates various features, such as data provider integration for automation in field population and more. For details, see the blog post about cloud-ready mode in MDG.
To stay up to date with MDG, simply follow the SAP Community Topic Page for SAP Master Data Governance, and check the MDG roadmap for all deployment versions.
Best,
Markus
