What inspired you to go with Starburst?

We went with Starburst for a number of reasons. We needed a system that could access heterogeneous data storages of various types and be able to specify on a per user basis, in a very fine-grained manner, who is allowed access to which data. Starburst thereby helps us implement data governance, via discovery, cataloging, and access control.

Cross-regional querying is also very important. Due to data compliance laws, data can only remain in its country of origin. With Starburst, we have the ability to query business metrics across borders without compromising on security, governance, and regulations.

Where does Starburst fit in your overall data strategy?

Starburst is a part of our overall infrastructure as the hub that allows us to connect regions and sources together and allows us to generate business metrics while adhering to data compliance laws.

What are your three favorite Starburst features?

My favorite three are:

• Auditability: Makes it easy to manage users and gives us insight into what queries are being run.
• Robust Support: The very organized and responsive Starburst team helped us through all of our deployment issues
• Starburst Stargate: This functionality gives us the ability to generate on-the-fly metrics that we aggregate in each region

Which business outcomes are you most proud of?

With Starburst, we are able to control and observe all of our data no matter where it lives! Plus, it’s easier for our teams to demonstrate compliance. We’ve also accelerated time-to-insight as our business analysts can explore data faster because the datasets, columns, and rows they’re permitted to access have already been established, and they don’t need to appeal to Data Services.

Do you think decentralized data access and Data Mesh are the future of analytics at scale?

Yes! I feel the data governance rules and regulations make it necessary to have a decentralized approach because data needs to remain in its region of origin. Starburst allows us to aggregate data from storages in each region, then across multiple regions. This allows us to discover, explore, and aggregate business data much easier without having to run into access requests and bureaucracy. It cuts down the turnaround time to generate new metrics, while also giving fast and secure data access.

One of the core missions of my team is to make a Business Data Mesh happen. It is my team’s job to deal with this problem, build out the capabilities, and enable these kinds of accesses while adhering to necessary policies. Starburst for sure made my life easier by enabling a first mesh that we can start operating.