When it comes to data and analytics, it’s hard to draw a line between them. While both have their individual value, “The magic comes when you fuse the two,” explained George Gilbert (@ggilbert41), Big Data and analytics analyst for Wikibon. Gilbert explained that the greater value is drawn from two elements that you have to work harder to put together.

Steve Todd, EMC fellow, joined Gilbert for an interview with Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, at MIT CDOIQ Symposium 2016 in Cambridge, MA. Todd is celebrating his 30th work anniversary with EMC. Twenty-five of those years were in software development and another five were in the CTO office. Todd has observed a trend in storage: moving up the stack. He said the volume of data is driving the business model.

The history of application building

Gilbert discussed the history of application building, remarking that for 40 years applications were built on a schema design. From there, it became a “bucket brigade” and developers would then build forms across the top.

This process “couldn’t have changed more” with the advent of Big Data. Now, the data comes first and thereby “informs how the application works.” Due to the fluidity of the data, which is the application’s foundation, the application is “always evolving.”

The importance of ‘guardrails’

Todd spoke about the direct correlation between increasing data value and the need for data protection. Metadata repositories make it easier to protect the data, but also to track value.

Gilbert remarked that it is important for IT to provide “guardrails” for the line of business. That way the data isn’t made unrecognizable. Todd stressed the importance of getting CDOs and CIOs to work together more closely moving forward.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the MIT CDOIQ Symposium.

Photo by SiliconANGLE