Rewired

Chapter 26Data architecture, or the system of data “pipes”

The script is a blueprint for the film. There are very few bad scripts that make good movies.

—Topher Grace

If you think of data as water, then data architecture is the system of “pipes” that deliver water from where it's stored to where it's used. Data architecture is the master environment to manage where data is stored, transformed, analyzed, and consumed by users or applications. Without sound data architecture, companies struggle, as data is often spread and trapped across dozens of data silos (e.g., legacy core systems).

When well implemented, data architecture leads to the ability to build reusable and high-quality data products more quickly and put data within easy reach of teams. This leads to better results for decision making, better intelligence in customer-facing applications and better internal access to, and control of, the data.¹

In their words: A data platform to enable agility

For most companies, the traditional approach to managing IT has been to build a budget around big application projects. Most customers are realizing they need to go to a more agile model, where the applications they develop are modular; they're smaller. That move toward an agile model is really helped by having a data platform that can support different applications.

Once you build an independent data platform, you can make application development much more agile. The platform has to be metadata based so you can actually understand ...