During Big Data London 2024, Kaycee Lai, Founder of Promethium, sat down with Ravit on The Ravit Show to discuss the complexities enterprises face in managing data, the evolving role of AI, and how Promethium’s data fabric is paving the way for more efficient and scalable solutions. The conversation touched on Promethium’s novel approach to data products and how they’re helping organizations overcome data challenges in the modern enterprise.
Simplifying Data Complexity with Promethium Data Fabric
In the interview, Kaycee shared Promethium’s mission to create a more enjoyable experience for using data addressing the pain points many enterprises encounter. Kaycee told Ravit, “It’s like being hit with an ATM surcharge every time you want to withdraw data.” Promethium’s goal is to simplify and accelerate the process of data usage, making it easier for every employee in an organization to build data products without the usual bottlenecks and costs.
Unlike traditional, rigid data management systems, Promethium Data Fabric is built to be flexible and agile. “We were gravitating toward natural language before GenAI was cool,” Kaycee told Ravit, emphasizing that their self-service platform now integrates AI to help users query data and get fast, transparent results. The result is a platform that empowers businesses to become more data-driven, while providing a better user experience.
Tackling Enterprise-Scale Challenges
Ravit was particularly interested in how Promethium is addressing the specific challenges faced by large enterprises. “When we talk about enterprise, we’re talking about complexity,” Kaycee explained. “They have every data platform and product under the sun, times two.” Promethium Data Fabric is designed to reduce this complexity by enabling business users to access data directly, without relying on large teams of data engineers.
Kaycee emphasized that time and efficiency are critical in enterprise environments. Promethium Data Fabric empowers users to ask questions and receive answers quickly, without the need to submit requests and wait weeks for data. The platform democratizes data access, making it scalable and efficient, a necessity for large organizations.
The GenAI Revolution: Hype vs. Reality
Ravit shifted the conversation to the topic of GenAI and its role in enterprise data management. Kaycee acknowledged that while GenAI is a hot topic, enterprises are starting to encounter real-world adoption challenges—especially around security, governance, and accuracy. “Your chief of governance doesn’t want you sending all your data to an LLM,” Kaycee told Ravit.
Promethium Data Fabric addresses these challenges by ensuring full governance and transparency without requiring businesses to move data to external LLMs. It provides full visibility into the data, showing users which databases, schemas, and columns were used to generate their results, as well as why certain filters and SQL queries were applied. This level of transparency is critical in building trust and ensuring accurate, relevant results from AI systems.
The Future of Data Fabric: Mesh Meets Fabric
As the conversation with Ravit continued, Kaycee shared his thoughts on the future of data fabric. He believes the market will eventually differentiate between true data fabric solutions and marketing hype. The future, he suggested, lies in a combination of data fabric and data mesh.
“You can’t build a good mesh without a good fabric, and a fabric isn’t useful without a mesh,” Kaycee explained. The two concepts complement each other—a data fabric provides the scalability and discoverability needed to build data products, while a data mesh offers the governance model to manage them.
Kaycee also shared that Promethium is the only data fabric company to win Gartner’s Cool Vendor award, a testament to their leadership in the field. As enterprises continue to evolve, Promethium’s innovative approach to building data products faster and with greater ease positions them as a key player in the industry.
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