IBM Corp.’s gathering of 150 chief data officers in Boston was a prime opportunity to have a frank discussion about the role and responsibility of a CDO in implementing the enterprise architecture blueprint. It’s an approach not without risk in today’s information technology community, since the CDO’s role has increasingly evolved into one where monetization of data for the business is not only encouraged, it’s expected.

“They’re charted with figuring out what the data strategy is, how to value data and how to put data front and center,” said Dave Vellante (@dvellante, pictured, left), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio. “IBM has been pretty leading and aggressive about going after the chief data officer role.”

Vellante made his comments during the kickoff discussion at IBM Chief Data Officer Summit in Boston, Massachusetts. He was joined by co-host Rebecca Knight (@knightrm, pictured, right), and they discussed the CDO’s role in shaping business models and questions surrounding data stewardship. (* Disclosure below.)

Process is now king

At the Boston gathering, IBM executives described their own lessons learned in reshaping the CDO role to meet business need. James Kavanaugh, IBM’s senior vice president of transformation and operations, suggested to attendees that process had replaced the data warehouse as the “king” of IT, making the CDO’s role even more critical.

“It’s a seminal time for chief data officers at companies,” Knight said. “This explosion in data is really forcing companies to rethink their business models.”

One component of the information deluge is data responsibility, the notion that whatever is collected still ultimately belongs to the user. An IBM presenter referenced unnamed companies on the West Coast that may not view data ownership on these terms.

“Of course, he’s talking about Google and Amazon, who are sucking in our data and then advertising to us,” said Vellante, who was looking forward to further discussion about how IBM’s data may still be shared across a client base. “[Advertising] is not IBM’s business; IBM is training models.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Chief Data Officer Summit. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the IBM Chief Data Officer Summit. Neither IBM, the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE