It’s not enough for a company to merely collect data. To truly benefit from the power of Big Data, a business must ensure the information it works with is timely, accurate and the same across all applications. That means any digital company needs to enact a strong data governance policy to preserve the value of its data.

To talk about the issue of data governance, Dave Vellante of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, joined Craig Steel and Chris Harrold at the BigDataNYC 2015 conference. Steel is the general manager of Global Strategic Alliances at Pivotal Software, Inc. and Harrold is the global field CTO for Big Data Solutions with EMC.

Data governance and analytics work together

The two guests agreed that to create an effective data governance policy, a company must consider its data needs. There is a definite link from application to Big Data analytics, but the interface must scale and be fast. Further, the company must be aware of what data will be part of its information ecosystem and where that data comes from. The data must be governed every step of the way.

The advantage of such a governance policy is that it makes things easier for the customers when they leverage tools for specific business use cases. Because the data is known to be of acceptable quality, the user can collect and leverage it with their own applications.

Adding the new to the old

Few companies want to give up their investment in legacy infrastructure. Neither do they want to create a wall between the equipment they’re used to and any new purchases. Because of this, any Big Data policy must take both the old and the new systems into account. Fortunately, there are many examples of this being done successfully.

The trick is get everyone in the company on board with any changes. The whole ecosystem, throughout the company, must be a part of the new data governance policy. In the end, the way old and new infrastructure works together must match the way the company’s developers use these infrastructure resources.

Watch the full video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of BigDataNYC 2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE