PwC Data Mesh Study: TL;DR for Busy Executives

Over the past few years, executives have shown interest in Data Mesh as a potential new solution to their data problems. In fact, out of 17,000 downloads of Zhamak Deghani’s O’Reilly Book Data Mesh: Delivering Data-Driven Value at Scale, over 25% of the readers have held VP+ titles. Why? It presents a completely new way to approach data management & analytics that addresses today’s challenge: Data-driven decision-making time delays. In short, it takes too long for teams to get access to the information they need for fast decision-making.

Leaders who haven’t already should review this post explaining what Data Mesh is and this episode of Data Mesh TV — a monthly educational program for data leaders by data leaders — with Starburst’s VP, Field Chief Data Officer, Adrian Estala and Vista’s EVP, Chief Data Officer, Dr. Sebastian Klapdor as they discuss Vista’s Data Mesh implementation journey.

Still, many wonder about the state of Data Mesh adoption. Is Data Mesh worth rethinking your current and longer term data management strategy? In the latest PwC report, Data Mesh – The next-generation enterprise data platform, the researchers address these concerns. They assess whether Data Mesh is worth the investment (the short answer is: it depends on the maturity of your data organization and Zhamak agrees), the expectations surrounding this new concept, and recommend a few ways to help enterprises to become data driven with Data Mesh.

The one key takeaway from this PwC Data Mesh study is that organizations are venturing to build a decentralized approach towards a Data Mesh. For those who want a quick recap of the key highlights of the data from this PwC report, here it is:

Current challenges around data and analytics for C-level executives

It’s not surprising that a lack of data literacy, low data quality, limits of legacy technology, and vagueness on how to operationalize developed use cases remain the biggest challenges surrounding data and analytics. Also, while many organizations have implemented self-service analytics tools, only 8% of the surveyed companies can conduct ad-hoc data analysis.

These are all pervasive limitations that prevent organizations from deriving business value from their data, which has us all asking whether Data Mesh is the answer for our enterprise data management challenges.

Enterprises are aspiring to develop their data management platforms towards a Data Mesh

In the latest PwC survey, 93% IT managers have discussed Data Mesh within their organization with 83% of them wanting to adopt this concept. However, more than a third of companies that want to adopt the concept lack a Data Mesh strategy.

Image, via Agnes Heringer

It’s encouraging, however, that survey participants (IT managers) expect that Data Mesh will improve the quality of their data analytics use cases, as well as  increase data reliability and trust.

Image, via Agnes Heringer

Just how much change will occur with Data Mesh? We see that Data Mesh is indeed a sociotechnical approach, impacting people, process, and technology.

Image, via Agnes Heringer

The PwC Data Mesh study is well worth your while. For a more comprehensive look, download the complete study, here.