Starting January 6, 2025, Microsoft Purview is set to revolutionize its Data Governance capabilities with the introduction of a new pay-as-you-go pricing model. This change is designed to provide more flexibility and cost-efficiency for organizations managing their data governance needs.

What’s New?

The new pricing model is based on two key metrics:

1. Number of Unique Governed Assets per Day: This metric counts the unique technical assets, such as tables, files, datasets, and reports, that are actively managed and curated within the Microsoft Purview Unified Catalog. Only assets associated with governance concepts, like data products or critical data elements, are considered governed assets.
2. Data Governance Processing Units (DGPU) per Run: DGPUs are fully managed compute units used for running compute-heavy capabilities, such as data quality and data health management. Each DGPU represents 60 minutes of compute time, which can be run across varying sets of nodes based on the workload needs.

Why This Matters

This pay-as-you-go model allows organizations to scale their data governance efforts according to their specific needs and usage patterns. By only paying for the assets they actively govern and the compute resources they use, businesses can achieve greater cost efficiency and flexibility.

Understanding Data Governance Processing Units (DGPUs)

DGPUs are a crucial component of this new pricing model. They are designed to handle compute-intensive tasks within Microsoft Purview, such as:

• Data Quality Management: Ensuring the accuracy, completeness, and reliability of data.
• Data Health Management: Monitoring and maintaining the overall health of data assets.

Each DGPU provides 60 minutes of compute time, which can be distributed across different nodes depending on the specific requirements of the task. This flexibility allows organizations to efficiently manage their compute resources and optimize their data governance processes. DGPU is available in three different performance options: Basic, standard, and advanced. By default any data management rule or health control is run on the Basic SKU. A customer can switch SKU’s based on the speed of compute suitable for their organization.

Microsoft Purview Data Governance | Enterprise Data Catalog

Microsoft Purview Data Governance Enterprise Catalog is billed based on a single meter, the data catalog, which is initiated when customers govern unique data assets. Data assets such as tables, views, AI models, semantic models, and many others that are linked to governance concepts in the product, such as data products and critical data elements, are counted as governed assets. Assets collected in the Purview Data Map but not linked to governance concepts aren’t counted as governed assets.

For example, if an organization has 500 tables, views, stored procedures, resource sets, and AI models in their data map, but only 200 unique governed assets in the data catalog, the monthly cost for 30 days would be €95.947 (without discounts). The 300 assets that aren’t linked to data products or critical data elements aren’t considered governed assets and therefore not counted. Data catalog managed assets are priced uniformly across regions. This pay-as-you-go model for a managed asset is prorated based on days governed within the monthly billing cycle.

Pricing Details 

• Data Catalog:
  • Standard: €0.0159 per asset per day or ~€0.48 per month
• Data Health Management:
  • Basic: €14.40 per Data Governance Processing Unit
  • Standard: €57.57 per Data Governance Processing Unit
  • Advanced: €230.28 per Data Governance Processing Unit

For example, if a customer runs 100 Data Management rules and controls in a single day, and each run produces 0.02 DGPU with the Basic SKU, then the total DGPU for that day would equal two DGPU, costing the customer €28.784. Pricing example is based on the US East pricing. Currently the Azure Price calculator is not updated yet.

To take advantage of this new pricing model, organizations need an Azure subscription and an Azure resource group within the same tenant as Microsoft Purview. If these resources are already in place for other purposes, they can be utilized for Microsoft Purview as well.

Conclusion

Microsoft Purview’s new pay-as-you-go pricing model is a significant step forward in making data governance more accessible and cost-effective. By aligning costs with actual usage, organizations can better manage their data governance expenses while ensuring robust data management practices.

Stay tuned for more updates and detailed pricing information as we approach the launch date! After the launch I will get back to with some more Pricing Examples.

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