The vocabulary required to manage the flow of enterprise data is beginning to change again. It started with bytes and worked its way up the scale through kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes. Then it progressed to terabytes and petabytes.

Now, when top executives of data integration and analytics companies talk about scale, the conversation often turns to exabytes, which, for the record, are each the unit equivalent of 1.5 billion CD-ROM discs. It’s a tall order when it gets to that size, and escalating data flows are forcing companies like Pentaho Corp., now part of Hitachi Vantara, to think through the challenges in a different way than it might have even a mere two years ago. This is also leading to innovative approaches by Pentaho customers, such as Ivy Tech Community College, to create an infrastructure that can deal with data demands.

“We have a number of customers that we’re helping manage exabytes and exabytes of data,” said Brian Householder (pictured), president and chief operating officer of Hitachi Vantara, in his kickoff remarks during the opening day of PentahoWorld in Orlando, Florida. “Being able to analyze all of the data that you have is a massive challenge.” (* Disclosure below.)

Founded 13 years ago, Pentaho built its reputation as a business data integration company with open-source analytics. It was acquired by Hitachi Data Systems Corp. in 2015 and then combined in September along with Hitachi Insight Group and Hitachi Data Systems as Hitachi Vantara.

Hitachi Vantara’s biggest product news during PentahoWorld was the launch of the 8.0 version of the Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics Platform, which is application container-friendly and gets native Apache Kafka support, allowing for real-time data processing to speed up digital insights. These new features support Hitachi Vantara’s goals of helping organizations create the right infrastructure to deal with data demands from all levels. 

Innovation to lead transformation

“Big data is no longer a big problem,” said Anthony DeShazor, chief solution architect and senior vice president of customer success at Hitachi Vantara, during the opening day kickoff at PentahoWorld. “The next problem is how do you transform your company? And [Hitachi Vantara] is this new massive innovation that will lead transformation.”

An important part of the transformation taking place as datasets expand in scale is how to access what’s important to the business when it’s needed most. “The number one challenge that I run into when talking with customers was over how they get to the data itself,” Householder said.

Dataset sizes are constraining the ability to move information where analytics can be performed and allow companies to pull relevant data. This is leading more firms to leave data where it resides and use the metadata layer for information architecture.

Last year, Pentaho introduced its 6.1 analytics platform that uses metadata injection to accelerate data integration. Metadata is clearly an important part of Pentaho’s big data strategy.

“Metadata is the most important piece of information out there,” Householder told the gathering. “You are going to have a whole different analytics tier for metadata.”

It’s new approaches like this that are leading organizations to take a fresh new look at how they structure the information technology operation. A prime example of this was provided to PentahoWorld attendees during the second day keynote session, which featured several customer presentations.

One customer was Ivy Tech Community College, which sounds like a small outfit, but is actually a network of 27 campuses throughout the state of Indiana. The college built NewT, a cloud-based, data warehouse and analytics platform to meet the needs of faculty and students using Pentaho technology.

Hiring a CDO to make data useful

The college initially did not embrace the idea of hiring a chief data officer. What changed the situation was the pain of being unable to leverage the data Ivy Tech needed to operate effectively.

“It was realizing they had one of the more innovative [data] warehouses I’ve ever come across, and they didn’t know how to make it useful,” said Brendan Aldrich, chief data officer at Ivy Tech Community College, during the Pentahoworld Day 2 keynote.

The community college network handles a tremendous volume of data per day, yet it increased speed to data from hours to seconds. “None of our reports opens in more than 10 seconds,” Aldrich said.

A major principle behind Ivy Tech’s IT operation is the concept of data democracy. In this approach, data isn’t access tier-protected, but made internally available to the broader community of employees. And the community college does no data cleansing, preferring that when problems do occur they can be fixed by the users.

“It’s not just giving people access, but making sure that access is intuitive, that the data they’re seeing is relevant to their responsibilities,” Aldrich explained. “This was all about leveraging data.”

Ivy Tech’s example as provided to PentahoWorld attendees supports one of the core principles that is part of the newly formed Hitachi Vantara. The company believes strongly in leveraging its “edge-to-outcomes” approach in ways that benefit the enterprise and the greater social good as well.

“We call this our double bottom line,” Householder said. “It’s how we benefit both business and society.”

Watch the complete keynote video below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of PentahoWorld. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for PentahoWorld. Neither Hitachi Vantara, the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE