In this engaging discussion, Jim Lebonitte, a Senior Distinguished Engineer at Capital One with over 15 years of experience, shares insights on modernizing data management in a cloud-based environment. He highlights the importance of well-governed data for AI advancements and discusses Capital One's innovative 'You Build, Your Data' model. The conversation covers balancing developer autonomy with governance, the significance of data cataloging, and best practices for adopting distributed data models to enhance efficiency and maintain data integrity.
Read more
AI Summary
Highlights
AI Chapters
Episode notes
auto_awesome
Podcast summary created with Snipd AI
Quick takeaways
Well-governed data is essential for empowering business teams at Capital One to use and build data applications rapidly while ensuring compliance.
The adoption of a microservices-based architecture enables Capital One to facilitate decentralized ownership and maintain effective API communication standards across teams.
Deep dives
Data Governance in a Cloud Environment
Well-governed data is crucial for companies implementing AI-driven capabilities, especially in regulated industries like banking. Capital One's transition to a cloud-based model required careful consideration of data governance to ensure that users could easily find, use, and understand data while remaining compliant with regulations. By federating data processes back to line-of-business teams, Capital One empowered these teams to build data applications rapidly while maintaining essential controls. This blend of autonomy and governance enables the organization to achieve fast-paced innovation without compromising on compliance and security standards.
The Transition to a Microservices Architecture
Capital One adopted a microservices-based architecture to address the challenges of moving to the cloud and to facilitate a decentralized ownership model. This architectural shift allowed for independent services to be created, each utilizing different tech stacks, while still adhering to established standards for communication through APIs. Ensuring formalized API contracts between services was key to maintaining interoperability and avoiding a chaotic ecosystem of undocumented APIs. By implementing these standards, Capital One was able to foster collaboration among teams while streamlining both development and data access processes.
The Role of Automation in Data Management
Automation plays a significant role in enabling effective data management within Capital One's distributed data model. The establishment of automated tools and processes allows data producers and consumers to register datasets and gain access without bottlenecking efficiency by relying on a centralized team. A cataloging strategy and governance framework facilitated the self-service approach while keeping data proliferation in check, allowing visibility and oversight over existing data sets. As a result, teams can leverage data-driven insights rapidly, supporting decision-making across various business units while effectively maintaining data governance.
Data is at the center of many business decisions and advances today, including AI-driven capabilities. This requires companies to have well-governed data that is easy for users to find, use and understand. In moving to the cloud, Capital One modernized its data ecosystem and adopted a “You Build, Your Data” model to equip its data stakeholders with self-service capabilities to use and build data applications.
Jim Lebonitte is a Senior Distinguished Engineer at Capital One leading technical architecture and strategy for enterprise data platforms. He has over 15 years of experience building platforms focused on data and software delivery experiences. Jim joins the podcast to talk about how to empower data users at scale while keeping data well-governed, building data pipelines and applications, and much more.
Full Disclosure: This episode is sponsored by Capital One.
This episode is hosted by Lee Atchison. Lee Atchison is a software architect, author, and thought leader on cloud computing and application modernization. His best-selling book, Architecting for Scale (O’Reilly Media), is an essential resource for technical teams looking to maintain high availability and manage risk in their cloud environments.
Lee is the host of his podcast, Modern Digital Business, an engaging and informative podcast produced for people looking to build and grow their digital business with the help of modern applications and processes developed for today’s fast-moving business environment. Listen at mdb.fm. Follow Lee at softwarearchitectureinsights.com, and see all his content at leeatchison.com.