Is Data Mesh right for your organization?

Data Mesh is a hot topic in the data world. A lot of people are talking about it, but not a lot are using it. If you’re new to the concept, you may not know exactly how it works. In this blog post, you’ll discover the answer to “is Data Mesh right for your organisation?”.

What is Data Mesh?

Data Mesh is an architectural approach that decentralises data ownership and management. Rather than relying on a centralised team to manage all your organisation’s data, Data Mesh divides data into individual domains, with each domain managed by its own team. These teams are responsible for defining the data models, governance policies, and quality standards for their domain with a small central governance co-ordination team. The Data Mesh approach also emphasises standardisation of APIs, data formats, and data access patterns to interoperability between domains.

Is Data Mesh right for your organisation?

Data Mesh isn’t right for everybody. It can be difficult to understand whether your resources are best suited to building a data mesh, or to allocate resources towards a more centralised platform. We’ve highlighted four factors that will determine if Data Mesh is right for your organisation. They are:

Your operating model

Along the sliding scale of your operating model, Data Mesh will suit your organisation better if it functions diversely when taking on several different perspectives. In contrast, a more uniformed operating model is more suited to a centralised data platform. Diverse operating models tend to appear in federated corporate structures, like conglomerates.

Governance and decision making

Data Mesh relies on strong data governance policies and standards to ensure data quality and consistency across domains. If your organisation’s data governance and decision-making is highly delegated, Data Mesh could be a good fit for you. On the other hand, if your organisation’s governance and decision making is more central, then your data platform should also be centralised.

Business processes and supporting systems

If your organisation’s data ecosystem is small and relatively simple – with only a few data sources and use cases – Data Mesh may be overkill. However, if your organisation has diverse business processes and supporting data ecosystems – with multiple data sources, data consumers, and data use cases – data mesh may be a better fit. This type of organisation will typically have a wide range of diverse lines of business or products.

Pace of change

How quickly does the data change in your business? As the speed of change increases, so does the suitability to Data Mesh. If your business model is constantly adapting to a changing business landscape, Data Mash may work. Whereas in organisations, such as public sector bodies, the business model is more static, and the pace of change lower.

Summary

In summary, Data Mesh is a powerful architectural approach to data management that can help you scale and manage data more effectively. Using this blog and the attached infographic, you should now be able to determine whether data mesh is the right fit for your organisation.

Data Vault is well-proven as a centralised model, but it is still suitable whether you’re doing a Data Mesh or not. Data Vault and Data Mesh can work well together, look at one of our other blogs.

Still not sure? Get in touch with us today. Or get involved in the Data Vault User Group Q&A forum, where a host of Data Vault experts are always happy to help you with all things data!