The ambiguous landscape of technology and its terminology

You hear terminology like DevOps, Data Lake, Big Data, Data Science, DataOps all around.

But what are those? One thing you can do is to google them, right?

I just googled “Data Lake”, so you don’t have to. You are welcome. The first two ads were for technology vendors, the third ad was from an independent consulting company. The first page had a “Data Lake” Wikipedia article and then the rest were big technology providers.

Soooo, is Data Lake a technology? And why does everyone provides it and name it differently? Snowflake, Databricks, Azure Synapse, Spark etc.

Or is it a technology-independent concept?

Wiki says “A data lake is usually a single store of data including raw copies of source system data, sensor data, social data etc. and transformed data used for tasks such as reporting, visualization, advanced analytics and machine learning.”. Is a file-share with CSV files, which you open in Excel a Data Lake? Is your “Data” folder on your laptop a Data Pond?

Or is it something completely different?

If you ask a technology vendor a Data Lake might be their technology or combination of different technologies.

If you ask an independent consulting company a Data Lake might be a selection of technologies plus their services on top of it (e.g. development, analysis).

If you ask a non-tech executive, a Data Lake might be a change of paying £0.5m a year to get sales data once a month to getting them every day and keeping the same costs.

If you ask a marketing team, a Data Lake might be a way how to target their audience better.

If you ask an architect, a Data Lake might be a set of practices including data management, data modelling, change management, data privacy with a long term strategy. It might be a need to have skills in development, analysis and user support and the right people in the right places supported with the right technology in order to meet reporting and analytics requirements. With a goal to get a return on the investment one day.

It’s very easy to get lost in technical terminology, but there is nothing easier than to ask. Unless you are worried about coming across as patronising and your anxiety instantly shoots through the roof. Then you just need to power through.