The evolution of the CDO role — Adrian Estala // Starburst

The Chief Data Officer role is relatively new but has quickly evolved from governance and data capabilities to thinking about the business, specific use cases, and the projects that will deliver those use cases. However, the biggest issue for a CDO, especially in a big company, is every one of your business consumers has a different ask. They want to use the same data, but they want to use it differently. How do you cope with that? Listen to Adrian Estala, VP, Field Chief Data Officer of Starburst, as he discusses the evolution of the CDO role.
About the speaker

Adrian Estala

Starburst

- Starburst

Adrian Estala is VP and Field Chief Data Officer at Starburst

Show Notes

  • 02:52
    Why is the Chief Data Officer (CDO) role relevant?
    Its a broad role that covers data governance and capabilities, use cases, and the business strategy behind it.
  • 05:43
    How Starburst helps CDO deliver value
    It helps CDOs leverage data where it sits without requiring migration.
  • 08:32
    What is the role of the CDO in a company where data or analytics isnt the product?
    It is about unearthing data and making it useful to someone, unlike CTOs, who are often data hoarders.
  • 11:30
    Should you be storing only the data you need or building a data lake?
    The idea of the data you need comes from when it was hard to get all the data. What if you can access all of it and figure out what you need?

Quotes

  • "For a CDO, what's unique about it is you have a broad scope. You see governance and data capabilities if you're the CDO in the center and look backward. And you see and start to manage how to apply that governance and capabilities, how to make it fit different business problems, how to make it fit different use cases. All of that has operations underneath it, so you're responsible for quite a bit." - Adrian Estala

  • "For a modern CDO, you're also thinking about the business, specific use cases, and the projects that will deliver those use cases. And you're thinking about the business strategy you're ultimately trying to drive against. And what underscores all of that is execution." - Adrian Estala

  • "When you can take that big view, and you can say Starburst is a proven capability that you can bring in, that will help you leverage all your data where it is today. A lot of us, one of the struggles or big challenges for a CDO is trying to get to that data, somebody, many people would say that's the big problem." - Adrian Estala

  • "There's a lot of data going unused and a lot of data going ultimately not exploited, right? We're not using that data to solve business problems. So nursing is the first challenge, right? When you can unearth that data and make it useful for many companies, that's the win. They stop right there. I solved the problem. All we were trying to do was unearth the data; I've made it available." - Adrian Estala

  • "Once you figure out how you want that data put together into a product, I guarantee ten other people in the company could use that data product. And they won't have to go through the same exercise because they can use it right off the shelf, pick it up and start to use it. And now you make it easy for people to innovate and invent how to use the data you have unearthed. And you've also made it easier for people to pick up with somebody's already built." - Adrian Estala

  • "If you're really good and have an efficient data platform, you can take your capabilities and, very easily, in a very agile way, deliver specific use cases. And so, the biggest issue for a CDO, especially in a big company, is every one of your business consumers has a different ask. They want to use the same data, but they want to use it differently." - Adrian Estala

About the speaker

Adrian Estala

Starburst

- Starburst

Adrian Estala is VP and Field Chief Data Officer at Starburst

Up Next: