Data Mesh 101: What It Is and Why You Need to Know

Data mesh is definitely a hot topic of late, but what is it and why do you need to know? This development in data architecture has the potential to transform how your organization handles data.? This article will give you the information you need to use data mesh in your organization and explain how to get support to implement this data structure to benefit your business.?

Defining Data Mesh

Data mesh is a way of structuring data within your organization for improved efficiency. The immediate predecessor of data mesh is the data lake, and many organizations continue to use this system. Data mesh avoids the aggregation of all data in one place that is a feature of data lakes and may even be considered a vestige of data warehouses.?

The key features of data mesh are, “Distributed Domain Driven Architecture, Self-serve Platform Design, and Product Thinking with Data.” Let’s break down each of these features.??

The distributed nature of data mesh architecture? means that rather than all data being gathered into a centralized data lake and all operations being performed on it there, the data is distributed across domains.?

Here the product aspect also comes in because each domain team builds and cares for its own data product. The domain will treat its data as a product rather than the result or subject of individual projects. In so doing, the members of each domain team treat the members of the other domain teams in the organization as the product’s customers. These products are connected by the organization-wide data mesh, but they are owned by individual domains made up of data scientists, engineers, and so on. This means that their data, as their product, is tailored to what is relevant to their domain, but also that it is ready for use by those in the other domains. Thus, the other domains do not have to worry about maintaining the quality of this data themselves.?

Data mesh’s self-serve platform design means that the domain will create each new data product more quickly, often employing automation. In order to avoid every domain having to create its own infrastructure, there can be a team that creates this self-serve platform for the other domains to use. This also has the advantage of standardizing the tools used to create the data products.?

Overall, data mesh represents a major shift in the way businesses work with data today, but it has a lot of potential to improve their use, storage, and management of data.?

Why Data Mesh Matters

Modern businesses constantly collect and receive large amounts of data. Your data architecture must ensure that your data is used efficiently in a way that supports the work of your data scientists and other professionals. Data mesh avoids many of the downsides of the prevailing, centralized data lake architecture, and if your competitors are using it, you may begin to fall behind.?

Square Peg Technologies Can Help You Get Started With Data Mesh

As your organization strives to manage the massive quantities of data involved in doing business today, you may need help, particularly when major paradigm shifts such as the move from centralized to decentralized data architecture take place. Square Peg Technologies’ expert consultants can help you create and use a data mesh approach to your data architecture, ensuring that you keep pace with your competitors. Reach out to us today to learn more.