Workspaces and Partitions - 1:n pros and cons

[npasero]

Hi all,

I am setting up a Marketo instance and the use case is the following: marketing campaigns are handled by region (EMEA, US, AP) and campaigns can be sent within the region (i.e. I can sign up to receive emails from France, Germany and Italy at the same time).

My idea was to have a WS and PP per region but I have the following questions:

1. Would it make any sense to instead separate partitions by country and have EMEA WS connected to Italy, germany and france partition? What advantage would i have from a data privacy point of view?
2. If we change idea in the future, what are the impacts of splitting the database in partitions later?
3. If we need, for security reasons, to have people being able to access only the database from their country, does this mean I need 1 worspace and lead partition per country?

Thanks a lot of any advice!

[JessicaMeyers · Accepted solution]

Workspaces & Partitions are a complicated topic and I know there are a LOT of posts on them on the community. Here are my two cents. 

1. I am of the school of thought that you should have the fewest number of W&P you can manage from a data architecture and privacy standpoint. WS add complexity to the governance structure that make cloning of assets tricky. Regardless you will likely want a global center of excellence to house program templates. And an admin workspace to handle any processes that affect multiple workspaces (opt-in, lead scoring, lifecycle, etc). If one workspace has access to multiple lead partitions, all users in that WS have access to all Partitions.
2. The biggest thing to think about splitting down the line, a lead (natively) can only be in one Partition, an you will likely need to be pretty thoughtful about what partitions connect to what workspace. The inverse is less true, if you start with W&P and decide to undo them - there are a NUMBER of things to consider. 
3.  The only way you can restrict database access in a single Marketo instance is to have partitions. Based on the details you have provided thus far, if you need teams from specific countries to only have access to leads in that country - you would need a Workspace and Partition. 
   I think this (lengthy) article does a great job of explaining a lot of the typical structures, and many of the downfalls that come with W&P. Good luck! these are a tricky topic. 
   
   
   

[npasero]

Thanks a lot for your very helpful reply! We will try to limit workspaces and partitions to regional and if really needed split it down the line.

[Michael_Florin]

I think the disadvantages of workspaces outweigh the advantages, and so I'd recommend to avoid them.

Advantage: Restrict user access

Disadvantage: No - or restricted - cloning or referencing of assets across workspaces. No sharing of a central token set.

Trust your users, they won't do stupid stuff, because they are smart and you have trained them well. 🙂