What is a data platform?
Data teams and data professionals build, manage and use data platforms.
But what exactly is a data platform.
Short Answer:
A data platform is a place where data is stored and accessible to end users. The most basic version is an Excel workbook stored in a shared location (OneDrive, Sharepoint, Google Drive).
Medium Answer:
A data platform is a computer system (and often a collection of computer systems) that stores all relevant data for the enterprise or organization. Data is stored with resilient, reliable and scalable technology (like a database). In addition to storage, it has tools to allow users to query, visualize, and interact with that data to support decision making.
Long Answer:
For a data platform to function as the home for enterprise data, the data has to be collected from various source systems. ERP, CRM, Accounting software, HR software, and any other application that houses your company data. Move data from source systems into the data platform is a key function of a data platform. This movement is facilitated by orchestration and scheduling tools as well as custom scripts that define how, when and what data gets moved.
When the data lands in the data platform, data teams focus on storage, quality, and modeling of the data. Storage requires considerations of data size, access requirements, structure and format of the data. Most organizations use databases, data lakes, and data warehouses to manage storage.
Using the data effectively is often the hardest step. Surfacing the data to users in understandable, flexible, and scalable ways presents numerous challenges. Defining key metrics (”revenue”) or entities (”member” or “donor”) is a constant collaboration between data teams and business users. Most often data is access through Business Intelligence analytics applications.
Books have been written about each area of a data platform, and vast numbers of software tools exists to solve problems in each area.
When embracing complex topics (for the first time, or the thousandths time), start with the forest and slowly move to the trees.
Have a great weekend,
Sawyer
