Summary

The modern data stack is a constantly moving target which makes it difficult to adopt without prior experience. In order to accelerate the time to deliver useful insights at organizations of all sizes that are looking to take advantage of these new and evolving architectures Tarush Aggarwal founded 5X Data. In this episode he explains how he works with these companies to deploy the technology stack and pairs them with an experienced engineer who assists with the implementation and training to let them realize the benefits of this architecture. He also shares his thoughts on the current state of the ecosystem for modern data vendors and trends to watch as we move into the future.

Announcements

Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management
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Your host is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Tarush Agarwal about how he and his team are helping organizations streamline adoption of the modern data stack

Interview

Introduction
How did you get involved in the area of data management?
Can you describe what you are doing at 5x and the story behind it?
How has your focus and operating model shifted since we spoke a year ago?
- What are the biggest shifts in the market for data management that you have seen in that time?
What are the main challenges that your customers are facing when they start working with you?
What are the components that you are relying on to build repeatable data platforms for your customers?
- What are the sharp edges that you have had to smooth out to scale your implementation of those systems?
- What do you see as the white spaces that still exist in the offerings available for the "modern data stack"?
With the rapid introduction of so many new products in the data ecosystem, what are the categories that you see as being a long-term necessity?
- What are the areas that you predict will merge and consolidate over the next 3 – 5 years?
What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected types of problems that you and your collaborators have had the opportunity to work on?
What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while building the 5x organization?
When is 5x the wrong choice?
What do you have planned for the future of 5x?

Contact Info

Parting Question

From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?

Closing Announcements

Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to check out our other show, Podcast.__init__ to learn about the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used.
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The intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA

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