Data Mesh Creator Zhamak Dehghani Joins the Big Data Debrief

Zhamak Dehghani turned the world of data management on its head six years ago when she created the concept of the data mesh. We recently caught up with Dehghani on the Big Data Debrief to discuss whether the core ideas behind data mesh have changed since 2019, as well as to talk about the launch of her startup’s first product, Nextdata OS.

The way we have managed data historically has been fraught with problems, not the least of which is an overreliance on centralized IT experts to transform, cleanse, and secure data, which creates a bottleneck that has slowed access to data.

While at Thoughtworks North America, Dehghani came up with the idea of a data mesh to help alleviate the data management burden. The central theme of a data mesh is to push much of the responsibility for data management back to the users, empowering them to get access to data without creating unnecessary risk.

Central to the data mesh idea is the notion of a data product. According to Dehghani, her startup Nextdata‘s new product, called Nextdata OS helps users build data product containers that encapsulate all stages of the data supply chain, from data ingestion, processing and modeling to automated quality and policy enforcement.

Check out my conversation with Dehghani below.