Authorized or not?

Over the weekend, we had some friends over for lunch. One of the conversation threads was about car (who is surprised?!). A friend who is contemplating upgrading his car, has been sufficiently tantalized by a particular make and model. The catch is that the relatively new entrant in Indian market does not have sufficient authorized centers and none closer to his house. Hence started the perennial debate of Authorized Service Centers (ASC) Vs Local Garage.

As folks talked about several points including high cost at ASC, building relationships at LG, highly specialized workforce at ASC, more control at LG, genuine parts at ASC - the point that stuck me the most was the safeguard on warranty at Authorized Service Center.

As someone who is always drawing parallel - this was a relatively obvious connection to the Authorized (or Authoritative) Data Source aka ADS

An ADS is a data source that has been accredited or licensed for distributing a specific type of data. The legitimacy of the data source is based of certain checks and balances that add comfort for the end user.

Now a non ADS data might be good today but the source has not been commissioned to distribute the data and hence may change the data definition without any liability. The ADS on the other hand is liable to provide a consistent data model that has been certified and is bound by strong change management requirements.

An Authorized Data Source is like a USDA approved organic farming establishment or an FDA approved drug.

If you want organic food, wouldn't it be intuitive to shop from organic section? If you have allergies would you not check food labels?

If you take business critical decisions based off a dataset, you should shop from a proper counter. In the likely event of lack of certified data, you should look at control failures. Not doing that is like having severe allergies and consuming food indiscriminately at a potluck - hoping all will be well.

By the way, my advise to the friend - Do not "not use the ASC" only because its difficult to reach. If you only need an oil change or a wheel alignment - hell yeah use the local garage.