Data management must be everywhere, according to Gartner VP Mark Beyer. “It has to recognize everything. It has to be dynamic in every way and enable discovery by everyone,” the analyst said during his keynote at Informatica’s Intelligent Data Summit, the first of a series of free events taking place this summer.

On par with financial and human capital, data is now capital given its ability to generate new digital products and services. These days, as the value of data is likened to gold, every organization aspires to extract as much value as possible from its data as, thus positioning it as the nucleus of sorts to how companies operate. 

As a result, we must “shift from the idea of understanding where data is stored and how to access it to focusing on integration, and integrating data continuously and always,” said Beyer. “That’s a big thing that’s going to happen in 2021 and beyond – humans and machines are going to become very sincere and dedicated partners to each other.”

Before humans and machines merge in a symbiotic relationship – hopefully one of commensalism in the favor of humanity – organizations must first lay the foundation for improved data management. This, according to Beyer, begins with well-managed metadata, which is where information on the applications producing the data, active users, and change patterns is held.

In terms of data management Beyer said the industry has done a “a pretty good job” optimizing infrastructure, resource allocation, and data quality engines to recognize integrity, validation frequency. “The big benefit in having all of these data management capabilities is we've been collecting metadata in our tools, design, runtime, and  operations for more than three decades,” he added. 

Data has the potential to be one of the most valuable assets to an organization – if and only if – it knows how to understand and leverage the power of that data. “Data cannot truly be established as a strategic enterprise asset without the power of a metadata driven model,” said Informatica CEO Amit Walia during his opening remarks. Metadata allows for insights into the entire platform, and it is crucial for generating business value from the different machine learning models. 

But many organizations are standing in their own way of progress, or as Beyer said, “most of what we do with metadata right now is very passive.” He described passive metadata as a series of reports and declared schemas, and understanding validation rules, observing enforced integrity, and knowing how to collate a line. And when its components need to be replaced or enriched, they’re  all based upon presumptive design.

“We have to shift the pattern of how we use metadata,” Beyer said. Metadata must move from laying dormant in a passive state and become active. Active metadata, Beyer says, “can change things.” 

According to Beyer, activating data will enable IT teams to start physically parsing data assets even when they don't know the schema; profile content and figure out if it matches other content through correlation; build graphs of how the data goes together and eventually reach thresholds of understanding that can determine a data entity’s existence even when the schema is unknown.

Interest in artificial intelligence (AI) is surging amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Spending on AI is poised to jump, particularly among enterprises that are deploying the technology in the cloud to accelerate efforts around automation and agility, according to a report from IDC.

According to Beyer, automation enabled through AI and machine learning is the principal engine for integrating metadata continuously and everywhere.

“As business conditions begin to change, we shift our organizational structure from one that's focused on designing and modifying what we design and detect to see what’s emerging and then automate that emergent,” Beyer said in explaining the progression to modern data management infrastructures. “I put the two together and I have a very modern data management infrastructure, all metadata driven, and teams of people working with machines.”