Data Mesh
The Future of Data Management and Sharing
The cradle of Data Mesh
Building a data-driven business remains one of the top strategic goals of organizations and executives. And while it may seem logical for companies to embrace the idea of being data-driven, it’s far more difficult to execute on that idea.
Changing landscape of data expectations
Data expectations used to be limited to Business Intelligence (BI) with reporting and dashboards. Today’s data however demand:
- the integration of machine learning and real-time
- data-driven optimizations
- streamlining operations (e.g. real-time logistics)
- democratization of data
- continuous, frictionless access to the latest data
Traditional and monolithic data architectures make it harder to build and maintain large, complex systems, and can limit the ability of organizations to respond quickly to changing business requirements. The central data team becomes a bottleneck when the number of data sources increases and they have to handle more and more diverse data use cases themselves, in the face of continuous change and increased business complexity. This is where the principles of data mesh come into play.
Data Mesh explained
Revolutionize Your Data Strategy
Data mesh answers the challenge of managing data by focusing on building a decentralized, self-serve data ecosystem. It aims to embed data-driven innovation within each department or team so that everyone in the organization is concerned and thinking about how to make data reusable and leverage it for new products and services within or across departments.
By allowing greater flexibility for data stakeholders and lessening the burden on teams, it addresses many common challenges and problems associated with traditional data management and data sharing practices:
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Unleash siloed dataIn many organizations, data is stored and managed in isolated silos, making it difficult to access and share data across teams and departments. A data mesh aims to break down these silos and enable data to flow freely and easily across the organization.
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Stop playing catch-upTired of playing catch-up with your data in a complex and volatile business environment? Data meshes allow you to manage changes to data gracefully. They align business, tech and data, while reducing the accidental complexity of pipelines.
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Reduce extensive coordinationReduce heavy coordination by delegate responsibilities to autonomous domains and their data product owners. Automate governance policies as embedded code and introduce explicit data contracts between data products to ease coordination.
Get started with Data Mesh
How to get started with Data Mesh
This article provides insights on how we assist clients in embarking on their initial steps into the world of data mesh. Contact us at the bottom of the page to begin your Data Mesh journey today.
Dive into Data Mesh with us at the Voxxed Days
Our expert speaker Tom De Wolf gave a talk "Platform Building for Data Mesh - Show me how it is done!" at the Voxxed Days Brussels (23/05/2023).
Join the Data Mesh Meetup
Our community is open to all people who are passionate about Data Mesh in Belgium. We want to stimulate sharing data mesh experiences, organizing events and come-togethers.
How does Data Mesh work?
Data mesh is an approach towards data management within organizations. The idea is to increase the accessibility, availability and usability of data to business users and reduce the interdependence between data teams. It is based on the principles of domain-oriented ownership, data as a product, federated computational governance, and a self-serve data platform. Data is treated as a product to be reused and this data product is a modular first-class citizen with its own independent change lifecycle and management structures.
- Team autonomy with minimal dependencies
- Transparency for cross-functional use between teams
- Improved agility and flexibility in data management
- Enhanced data governance
- Breaking up data silos by data sharing & reusability
- Seamless integration with emerging technologies
Traditional data approach vs data mesh
Decentralized approach
Imagine a company with different teams for different business domains such as HR, sales, finance, logistics and marketing. A data mesh architecture would allow each team to have its own autonomy over the quality and the management of the data specific to that team. They can access the data they need through API’s and the data is published in a shared data catalog that can both be easily accessed and updated by all teams. This creates a shared understanding of data and eliminates data silos, making it easier for teams to collaborate, share data and make faster data-driven decisions. The ownership is decentralized with the domain teams, and they are empowered by a shared self-serve data platform.
Multi-disciplinary approach
Data Mesh is considered a multi-disciplinary approach because it involves several disciplines to implement, some examples:
- Innovation-mindset
- Data experts to develop & leverage data products
- Software engineering & Cloud to build a self-service data platform
- Product Management to design the (data) product with user experience
Customer Success Stories
- Department of CJM and publiq connect culture players with data-driven platform
ACA Group helped the Department Culture, Youth & Media (of the Flemish Government) implement a platform based on a data mesh architecture.
- DNB Bank's Data Mesh Journey gained valuable insights from the platform engineering expertise of ACA Group
ACA Group, played an expert role in guiding DNB towards an elevated understanding on how a self-service data mesh platform architecture can be designed and engineered.
Data Mesh Blogposts
- How to get started with Data Mesh
In this article, we'll explore some key challenges and practical tips for getting started with Data Mesh.
- Data Product Analysis: How Do I Start?
In the world of data mesh, data products are key. But what exactly is a data product and how do you approach the functional analysis of such a data product? You will discover it in this blog post.
- Is it Data Lake vs. Data Mesh? Or can they complement each other?
In this blog, our expert will dive into the two concepts of Data Lake and Data Meshand and explore how they can complement each other.
- Applying Data Mesh principles to an IoT data architecture
This blog post shows how a data mesh approach avoids an unmaintainable monolithic data platform by explaining what data mesh is, its principles and applying it to an IoT data case as an example.
Data Mesh News
- Tom De Wolf shares insights at PlatformCon 2024: Engineering Platforms with Kubernetes Operators
ACA proudly announces Tom De Wolf's participation in PlatformCon 2024, where he presented on "Engineering Platforms Using Kubernetes Operators". Highlighting strategies to lower developers' cognitive load, Tom demonstrated how Kubernetes operators and CRDs create higher-level abstractions in the Platform Orchestrator.
- Expert Tom De Wolf recognized as Data Mesh Learning MVP
We are proud to announce that Tom De Wolf has been recognized as a Most Valuable Professional (MVP) by the Data Mesh Learning Community for their outstanding contributions and thought leadership.
- Webinar Recap: Data Mesh in the Flemish Cultural Sector
Tom De Wolf, our Data Mesh Expert at ACA Group, has recently given an insightful webinar on our data mesh journey in the Flemish Cultural Sector. He highlighted the significant benefits of our Data Mesh approach, focusing on its self-service capabilities for data product developers and consumers. Read the recap here!
- Data Mesh Belgium meetup #3: key takeaways
We recently hosted the third successful Data Mesh Belgium meetup at the Google office in Brussels. Check out the key takeaways here!
- Tom De Wolf joins expert panel on Data Mesh Operating Models
Data Mesh, known for its decentralized and federated approach, presents unique challenges, especially for enterprises used to centralized data management.
- Data Mesh Radio: Platform Engineering for Data Mesh by Tom De Wolf
Tune into the latest episode of Data Mesh Radio! Where our colleague Tom De Wolf shares insights on applying Platform Engineering for Data Mesh.
- Flanders Digital Award for Digital Transformation
ACA Group, CJM department, and publiq honored at the Flanders Digital Awards 2023
- Flanders Digital Awards: Double nomination with Data Mesh Project i.c.w. Publiq and CJM
The Flemish Department of Culture, Youth and Media (CJM) double nominated for the Flanders Digital Awards in the "Best Digital Transformation" and "Most Sustainable Project" categories. ACA Group helped the department work on this project, using the power of Data Mesh!
- Throwback to the second Data Mesh Belgium meetup in Hasselt
On 18 September, we held the second Data Mesh Belgium meetup in our Hasselt office.
- ACA Group as an invitee at the Data Mesh Round Table from CIONET
On June 22 our colleague Tom De Wolf was invited at a round table on #DataMesh as subject matter expert!
- Milestone reached! Meetup Data Mesh Belgium achieved 100 members!
We are thrilled to announce that the Data Mesh Meetup Platform has reached a significant milestone: we now have 100 members!
- ACA organizes the first successful Data Mesh Belgium meetup
On the 14th of March, we hosted our first Data Mesh Belgian Meetup at our Hasselt office partnering up with two esteemed data experts, Wannes Rosiers and Mathias Lavaert!
- ACA Group launches first Data Mesh Meetup
This community is open to all people who are passionate about Data Mesh in Belgium. We want to stimulate sharing data mesh experiences, organizing events and come-togethers for everyone whose interested.
Want to know more about Data Mesh?
Want to identify your Data Mesh opportunities? Interested in finding out more about Data Mesh? Contact our Data Mesh expert Tom De Wolf for more information or send us a message via our website chat.
