Foreword
Medallion architectures—I have a love/hate relationship with them. How could something so bluntly simple cause so much confusion and debate in our industry? Why does everyone have a differing definition for them? Why do we even need such concepts? And most importantly—why should you care?
I had spent nearly a decade as an in-house business intelligence developer before I turned external consultant, just in time to catch the wave of Europe’s early Azure adoption for analytics. Wrestling with single-box SQL Server to create cloud-friendly architectures, and seeing how it simply did not fit, led me to embrace the explosive rise of data lakes and distributed compute back in 2015.
Since then, my mission has been clear: unify our approaches, learn from the past, and evolve without clinging to outdated traditions. Medallion architectures are a great tool for communicating that vision. At Advancing Analytics, I help companies worldwide unlock the true potential of their data—going beyond “faster and cheaper” so evolving businesses can work in new ways, enabled by the data they already have. I advise industry giants like Microsoft and Databricks, shaping the tools and strategies of tomorrow, and spend a lot of time talking about data architectures at worldwide conferences, events, and on our own Advancing Analytics YouTube channel.
I’ve designed architectures for gigantic global retailers, tech-savvy digital startups, monolithic regulated financial services, and everything in ...