Federal Tech Talk

Managing the flood of data at your agency

Brian Boxman, vice president of Sales Mid Atlantic and Public Sector at Talend, joined host John Gilroy on this week's Federal Tech Talk to discuss how his comp...

John Gilroy

November 27, 2019 7:55 am

1 min read

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This week on Federal Tech Talk, host John Gilroy spoke with Brian Boxman, vice president of Sales Mid Atlantic and Public Sector at Talend. During the interview, Boxman addressed one of the most obvious topics: How to mange the flood of data every federal agency is encountering

Head shot of Boxman — Brian Boxman, VP Sales Mid Atlantic Public Sector, Talend

Talend helps large organizations collect, transform, cleanse, and move large data sets. Boxman detailed the differences between data lakes and data warehouses. He suggests that a data lake handles data in a relational manner. A data lake uses a flat file method, which some people may think is borderline “academic,” despite the contrary.

It is probably the most practical differentiation if your agency wants to step into the world of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence likes the flexibility of data in a relational storage system. This way, it is unencumbered, and data can be sifted and sorted easier than in a relational database.

Boxman explained that, in order to interoperate at scale, one must understand metadata. Talend has the capability to work with major cloud vendors like Amazon Web Services and Azure. This is important because this month the Office of Management and Budget announced the formation of a Data Council. The idea is to give federal information technology professionals the tools, processes, and capabilities to leverage data as a strategic asset.