a16z Podcast

The Great Data Debate

Nov 13, 2020

In this insightful discussion, George Fraser, founder of Fivetran, moderates a captivating debate featuring Bob Muglia, former CEO of Snowflake. They dive into the evolving roles of data lakes and warehouses, exploring how their functionalities are converging. The conversation touches on the integration of machine learning with analytics, the importance of low latency, and the future direction of the modern data stack. With perspectives on decentralization and the significance of collaborative tools, they tackle the complexities of technology in enterprise environments.

26:28

Creator website

Episode guests

Bob Muglia

George Fraser

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Intro

2min

Evolving Data Storage Technologies

7min

Evolving Dynamics in AIML and Data Integration

3min

Integrating Machine Learning and Data Analytics

12min

Navigating Data Latency and Throughput Trade-Offs

2min

The Future of Data Platforms and Server Architecture

2min

Lakes v. warehouses, analytics v. AI/ML, SQL v. everything else... As the technical capabilities of data lakes and data warehouses converge, are the separate tools and teams that run AI/ML and analytics converging as well?

In this podcast, originally recorded as part of Fivetran's Modern Data Stack conference, five leaders in data infrastructure debate that question: a16z general partner and pioneer of software defined networking Martin Casado, former CEO of Snowflake Bob Muglia; Michelle Ufford, founder and CEO of Noteable; Tristan Handy, founder of Fishtown Analytics and leader of the open source project dbt; and Fivetran founder George Fraser.

The conversation covers the future of data lakes, the new use cases for the modern data stack, data mesh and whether decentralization of teams and tools is the future, and how low we actually need to go with latency. And while the topic of debate is the modern data stack, the themes and differing perspectives strike at the heart of an even bigger: how does technology evolve in complex enterprise environments?