Data has been buzzed about for a long time, but this year, we are seeing it advance to centerstage faster than ever before. Conference after conference, we hear experts talk about proving the business value of data and taking it from an arcane, back-office science to the fingertips of small and medium business owners.

Debbie O’Brien, VP of Global Communications at Informatica Corp., said we are beyond 1.0 and even 2.0 into data 3.0 — which is all about “data democratization.” She told John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris), cohosts of the theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during Informatica World 2016, “Data is no longer in the bowels of IT; it’s a board-level discussion now.”

Social, mobile and the holistic view

“We’re looking at our customers holistically,” O’Brien said, adding that Informatica is taking its methods for understanding its own customers and making them available to use through their product offerings.

“We’ve got a great retail customer who is using us and our MDM [Master Data Management] application to make sure that they understand their customers online, they can understand them in the physical store, and in the catalog,” she added.

Furrier mentioned the flack Facebook is getting for hoarding data from those seeking to democratize it. He asked O’Brien about using social and mobile data to market to customers.

“The Internet and what’s happening with social — it’s so powerful,” O’Brien said. She said that the uses for democratized data span from adding business value to improving  governments and affecting change in societies.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Informatica World 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE