Why You Need a Modern Metadata Platform

The Data Exchange Podcast: Pardhu Gunnam and Mars Lan on why a metadata fabric is key to building data services on top of modern data stacks.

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Pardhu Gunnam (CEO) and Mars Lan (CTO), are co-founders of Metaphor Data1, creators of the first Modern Metadata Platform (MMP). As we noted in a previous post, a metadata fabric is the right foundation for data governance and data discovery solutions, data catalogs, and other enterprise data services. This insight resulted in several metadata systems being created within technology companies a few years ago. In fact, the team at Metaphor created one of the more popular systems – DataHub – while they were at Linkedin.

MMP’s are going to enable many important data services on top of modern data stacks. As an initial application of Metaphor’s MMP, we discuss how their metadata fabric makes data discovery truly self-serviceable.

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Mars Lan

Metadata is such a cross cutting thing. You bring out the power of metadata by being cross cutting, not by being very vertical about it. So that’s why we spend a whole lot of effort thinking about architecture. How do we build a platform that is capable of onboarding, any kind of metadata you want, easily, and then present it back to the user in a way that’s very easy to build an application. … You need to have actual solutions that actually solve people’s problems. But because you have this solid foundation based on metadata, your solution will be sound as well. And then you can also change your solution, build your solution, evolve your solution over time, without having to tear out your foundation every time you do that.

Pardhu Gunnam

What Metaphor unlocks immediately out of the box is that it immediately gives you exposure to important rich insights within your data ecosystem. Like what data is the most useful, what is not, not just by simple queries and stuff, but bynbprofiling it with respect to who the users are, what kind of roles they have, and how are they related to you. … And there is no real place for capturing this information. That’s what Metaphor enables.  … Metaphor enables people to share insights across the groups and improve your data literacy and within your company.

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[1] Ben Lorica is an advisor to Metaphor.

[Photo: aerial photography of freight truck lot from Piqsels.]