The Meta Grid / Ontology beef
Yes, the Meta Grid is data - but what kind of data?
Palantir successfully launched Ontology on 23-sep-2024 and it is persuasive, promising and intriguing. Its delicate esthetics underpin the value of a graph powered data layer that connects analytics, workflows, integrations, models and obviously data itself.
Many will see this architecture as yet another manifestation of the superiority of graph technology to work with data and I agree. I wholeheartedly agree. I think Palantir visualize the benefits of a graph powered ontology like very few tech vendors have done.
However, I would like to ask: What is Ontology a picture of? In particular, I would like to ask, what is outside side picture? What does Ontology not contain? And furthermore, what does it take to get in this picture?
These questions are what I address with the Meta Grid. The Meta Grid would obviously benefit of an architecture as soothing as that of Ontology, but, alas, I have never seen that. And it has to do with what the Meta Grid depicts.
The Meta Grid depicts the IT landscape at the metadata level - not only the data within it. And that’s the tricky part: It comes down to what we mean by “data”. Obviously, technically, data is - data. But the data about the IT landscape is stored in systems outside of the scope of technologies such as Ontology, that is hydrated by data in the IT landscape.
Data about the IT landscape: I’m talking about Information Security Management Systems (ISMS), Endpoint Management Systems (EMS), Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) tools and a plethora of other metadata repositories that depict phones, computers, sensitive data types, applications and names of projects etc... Metadata. That, yes, technically is data. But data about the IT landscape. This type of data will typically be stored in applications not in scope for technologies such as Ontology.
I have worked in a handful of big enterprises, I have advised for many more, and a movement towards the one depicted in Ontology is never in scope, when it comes to understanding not the data, but the IT landscape of a company. The problem I see when mapping an enterprise IT landscape is that the awareness of multiple sources rarely occur, all technologies map the IT landscape in isolation.
The organizational awareness and willingness to move towards the realty in Ontology for depicting the IT landscape is not there. It will most certainly be there for depicting the data in the IT landscape by Ontology, but not for the data about the IT landscape.
I believe you made me aware of Ontology from Palantir first. Don’t get me wrong here. I’m a big fan of ontologies.
#metagrid #metadata #metadatamanagement