Data cataloging is emerging as one of the surest routes through the big data muddle in enterprises. Its powers lay in combining and collapsing steps that would otherwise run end-users ragged.

“There are a lot of data catalog products out there, but our huge differentiator — one of them — is the fact that we have integrated data preparation,” said Chris Selland (pictured), vice president of strategic alliances and corporate development at Unifi Software Inc. This removes a huge burden from users’ hands, he explained. A single monolithic receptacle for every data point in the universe is not what’s taking shape in most enterprises. Instead, we are seeing networks of data spring up.

“In reality, some of the data’s in the warehouse; some of the data’s in the lake; some of the data’s in SaaS applications; some of the data’s in block storage. And where is all of that data, what is it, and what can I do with it?” Selland asked. Those are the questions that built-in data preparation answers, he stated.

Selland spoke with George Gilbert (@ggilbert41) and Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at the BigData SV event in San Jose, California. They discussed the folly of data dumping, preparation versus governance, and GDPR compliance.

Data dumps put off until tomorrow …

Dispersed data networks seem more complex than a single data lake — that was the thinking behind early Apache Hadoop projects, Selland pointed out. “It was just like, let’s just dump it all into Hadoop, because it’s cheaper than the warehouse. So let’s just put it all in there, and we’ll figure out what to do with it later,” he said. But once it was time to extract and analyze the data, many found their big data lakes unnavigable swamps.

A more thoughtful approach to storing and preparing data results is less grunt work for analysts, according to Selland. Unifi actually leverages Hadoop in appropriate cases. “If you’re using it in a structured way, it can be extremely useful,” he said.

While Unifi is not a governance platform, data preparation is ultimately a crucial component of governance. “GDPR is coming in May, and you’re starting to really see a groundswell of, ‘OK … that’s not about speeds and feeds; that’s ultimately about making sure that I’m compliant with this huge regulatory environment,'” he said.

Unifi is committed to complying with the law, as well as the court of public opinion. “We want to make sure that we’re doing the right thing with data,” Selland concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the BigData SV event.

Photo: SiliconANGLE