From Data Lakes to Data Fabric/Mesh: The Future of Enterprise Data Platforms in a Multi-Cloud World

Abstract

The evolution of enterprise data management has seen a shift from traditional data warehouses to data lakes, and now towards data fabrics and data meshes. This article explores this progression, particularly in the context of multi-cloud environments. Data fabrics provide a unified, virtualized view of data across disparate sources, while data meshes decentralize data ownership and governance, aligning with modern, agile development practices. The article discusses how these architectures can be implemented in multi-cloud setups, ensuring data consistency, security, and performance. It also addresses the challenges and opportunities presented by this shift, such as integrating AI and ML workloads into the data platform. The article concludes with a forward-looking perspective on how enterprise data platforms will continue to evolve to meet the demands of a multi-cloud, data-driven world.