Latest dispatch from big data: Randomly stuffing things in a receptacle, digging them out to label them, and then putting them back: Not good. Labeling them first and then putting them in their proper place: Better. Guess we should have thought of that in the first place. 

Thinking of things in the first place is a principle of what Rik Tamm-Daniels (pictured, left), vice president of strategic ecosystems and technology at Informatica LLC, calls “Data 4.0.” At this stage, companies still struggling with their data strategy ought to a) prioritize data governance and b) make ample use of machine learning and artificial intelligence to be more efficient at it, according to Tamm-Daniels.

Also, it’s crucially important to apply governance — labelling, policies, authorization, etc. — from the get-go. “It’s much harder to add data governance after the fact, so you put it in upfront,” he said.

Tamm-Daniels and Rick Turnock (pictured, right), global head of enterprise data services at Invesco Ltd., spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent. They discussed the benefits of upfront governance for more efficient operations and business value. (* Disclosure below.)

AI helps governance medicine go down faster

Turnock took over data governance at Invesco seven years ago. After reviewing the weaknesses in its old system, his team determined that they needed to build governance directly into the new architecture. It already used Informatica Data Quality software on-premises, and connected it to its new infrastructure in the Amazon Web Services Inc. cloud. It now also uses Informatica’s Axon governance tool with AI for a range of data-governance tasks, Turnock explained.

“You’re profiling the data, your defining entitlements and who has access to it, you’re defining data quality rules that you can validate, you define the policies … as you do that from the start, then you have a well governed and documented data catalog and taxonomy that has the polices and the controls in place,” he explained. “If you do it after the fact, then you’re always catching up.” 

In the end, it’s all about good data, readily available, enabling good business on all fronts. “Garbage in is garbage out, and you’ve really got to have those processes to get the full value of what you’re building,” Tamm-Daniels concluded. 

Informatica just announced a comprehensive data-governance solution for Snowflake Inc.’s data cloud.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: Informatica LLC sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Informatica nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE