It’s an exciting time in the world of big data and analytics. Technology is finally moving at the real-time speed of business thanks to the cloud — and we’re witnessing the gap between the IT and business teams disappear as a result.
Those working in data know that has always been the goal of data architects and engineers. But the advent of the cloud has turned data dreams into reality for some of today’s most innovative companies.
Perhaps nobody knows the impact of these changes better than Snowflake’s Chief Technical Evangelist, Kent Graziano (AKA. The “Data Warrior”). As a long-time industry veteran, Kent has not only seen it all, he’s also written the playbook on harnessing big data to achieve business goals.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Kent about his 30-year data journey and hear his thoughts on the future of analytics, data governance, and the evolving role of data warehouses in the enterprise.
You’ve been working in the data space for a long time. How did you get your start?
Before I worked in data, I was a programmer. I did scientific programming and things of that nature, and eventually jumped into data from there. I got involved with my first small Oracle database in the late ’80s.
That first Oracle database turned me onto data warehousing in the mid-90s. That was when I met Bill Inmon . I coauthored The Data Model Resource Book with Bill and Len Silverston in ’97, which was a real turning point in my career. It was all really exciting. I got to work with Bill, I got to meet Claudia Imhoff , and they’ve been friends and mentors ever since. The rest, as they say, is history.
Kent with Bill Inmon (to his left) and colleagues, 2016.
What’s kept you inspired to stay in the industry all these years?
It’s the interest in how people can use data. The whole moniker of ‘data for good’ is certainly always in the back of my mind, how nonprofit organizations—and even corporations—use data for the betterment of society.
The fact that technology kept changing and evolving has also kept me engaged. After working in the on-prem database world for 25+ years, Snowflake came along. I saw what Snowflake was able to do, and how easy they made it to access, process, and analyze data with the new cloud architecture that our founders invented. That was a real turning point. It re-energized me. I remember thinking, “Okay, this is it. This technology solves the problems that my clients face every day.”
Can you share a little bit more about your role at Snowflake?
I am the Chief Technical Evangelist. My tribe is data architects, data engineers, and senior technical people that, like me, have been in the industry in some cases for a couple of decades.
I help them stay up to date and understand the challenges and opportunities that are in front of us with the cloud: the incredible increase in the amount of data coming from sources like IoT and mobile, and the opportunity to harness that data to drive business value. I help these people answer the questions:
How do we get from the on-prem world to the cloud?
What’s a rational architecture and approach to take?
How do we think about this?
What do we need to think about differently?
You frequently write and speak about the changes happening in data governance. What are the biggest trends you’ve uncovered?
There is a growing interest in data governance, specifically because of things like CCPA and GDPR that require data lineage and the “right to be forgotten.” People are looking for answers on how to manage their data in compliance with these new regulations.
What might be surprising to many people is that data governance best practices have existed for a couple of decades. The questions have already been answered. We now need to force ourselves into the discipline of following those best practices.
The cloud hasn’t changed data governance.
