Chief Data Officers (CDOs) are a small elite in technology, but their numbers are swelling. Not long ago, theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, interviewed staff from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock about the special CDO training program the school is rolling out. And theCUBE learned that the real driver of demand for CDOs is the mega wave of Big Data science, technologies, platforms and applications currently breaking. Companies know that these tools hold enormous potential, but they need people with specialized skills to bring understanding and priorities to what might seem like a big mess to them.

During the IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit, Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Stu Miniman (@stu), cohosts of theCUBE, spoke about the landscape of Big Data technology that is creating the space for CDOs. Vellante noted the growth in cognitive computing, AKA “Big Data on steroids” at companies like IBM.

“What [IBM’s] doing is, it’s taking Watson and applying Watson into, let’s say healthcare, for example, and doing the same in financial services,” he said. “[It is] taking its industry expertise, automating with cognitive many of the functions typically done by humans.”

Of course, this automation, if adopted widely, could shake things up at companies — in terms of personnel, costs, operations, etc. Those are changes that CDOs will have to diligently navigate, according to Vellante and Miniman.

Chief data officer democratization

Miniman said that the buzz at the CDO Summithas been largely around cognitive technology. “The whole message around cognitive as a service seems to be resonating with the customers we’re talking to,” he said

On the role of the CDO, specifically, Vellante and Miniman noted something interesting: “CDOs have a greater percentage of women than tech in general,” Miniman said. Vellante concurred, citing a recent 25 percent figure.

Miniman mentioned the presence of many women at the IBM CDO summit, and said, “Kudos to IBM for some of the women in tech activities they’re doing.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit.

Photo by SiliconANGLE