Big data has returned to the mainstream, evolving from being a hyped buzzword to an integral part of everyday operations. As the business world becomes more accustomed to the idea of data as a virtual asset, the general perception of cloud computing operations is changing.

“On the data side … [there is an] interesting philosophical shift, going from ‘I couldn’t possibly do it in the cloud!’ to ‘Why in the world would we not do things in the cloud?’” said James Markarian (pictured), chief technology officer of SnapLogic Inc.

Markarian spoke with Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, live from SnapLogic’s headquarters in San Mateo, California. They discussed the evolution of big data in the cloud and a product, SnapLogic eXtreme, a big data self-serve integration solution. (* Disclosure below.)

Leave data management to the experts

As a leader in the integration platform as a service market, SnapLogic works closely with companies on the digital transformation journey, and Markarian sees what he describes as the “interesting dynamics of that movement.”

The first dynamic, and one that is in process for most companies, is moving data into the cloud. But what do you do with it once it’s there? This is where SnapLogic steps in, connecting cloud-based data and helping businesses create return on investment from their data lakes.

“Snaplogic eXtreme is kind of like a response to this trend of data moving from on-premise to the cloud,” said Markarian, who sees a shift in cloud computing to more hands-off data management, with companies choosing one of the big three — Amazon, Google or Microsoft — to deal with storage infrastructure, reducing operational overhead as the data center disappears from the corporate office.

The new SnapLogic headquarters are a testament to this trend: “We have a little closet with some of the servers we keep around, but mostly, everything we do is on Amazon,” Markarian stated. “You’re even looking at things like, commercial real estate is changing because I don’t need all the cooling and the power and the space for my data center that I once had.”

The democracy of new “pay-as-you-go” methods for Amazon’s services inspired SnapLogic to review its pricing model. A new flexible cost structure introduced with SnapLogic eXtreme enables customers to pay for the time they spend actually working with their data without being concerned about server load.

“Let SnapLogic worry about spinning up and spinning down these machines, because a lot of these workloads are data integration or application workloads that we know lots about,” Markarian said.

Democratization trends in data

Regarding the democratization of data, Markarian believes that the industry made a mistake right from the outset: “Part of the initial move to the cloud was the failure to properly democratize data inside the enterprise,” he stated.

Now that the digital revolution is underway, with a large portion of the world already connected, he sees an immediate and critical challenge to control and secure data access. “It’s a little bit like … there’s all these cautionary tales out there, like beware of artificial intelligence and robotics and everything, and nobody really thinks about the danger of the data that’s there,” Markarian stated. “It’s a much more immediate problem, and yet it’s sort of like the silent killer until some scandal comes up.”

Open and decentralized are the mantras of blockchain advocates, but Markarian predicts data security will go in a different direction: “I think that this privacy and this curation and tracking of who has the data, who has access to it and can we control it, I think you are looking at even more like centralized and guarded access to this private data,” he concluded.

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE