Data Lakehouses Enable Data as a Product
I have previously described how data as a product was initially closely aligned with data mesh, a cultural and organizational approach to distributed data processing. As a result of data mesh’s association with distributed data, many assumed that the concept was diametrically opposed to the data lake, which offered a platform for combining large volumes of data from multiple data sources. That assumption was always misguided: There was never any reason why data lakes could not be used as a data persistence and processing platform within a data mesh environment. In recent years, data as a product has gained momentum outside the context of data mesh, while data lakes have evolved into data lakehouses. It has become increasingly clear that data lakehouses and data as a product are well matched, as the data intelligence cataloging capabilities of a lakehouse environment can serve as the foundation to enable the development, sharing and management of data as a product.