Just over seven years ago, Pentaho Corp. founder James Dixon famously coined the term “data lake” in a blog post about his company’s first software release built atop open source data management platform Hadoop. A lot of data has flowed over the dam since then, the lake looks more like an ocean and the challenge confronting enterprises today is how to make all of the stored information “actionable.”

One company that has built its business around doing exactly that is Melissa Data Corp. (named for the firm’s president and founder Ray Melissa), a provider of data quality and identity verification solutions. “You can try to boil that data lake, which is very challenging,” said Charles Gaddy (pictured), business development manager of global services at Melissa. “Or you can extract quality information out of it.”

Gaddy stopped by the set of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, and spoke with co-hosts Rebecca Knight (@knightrm) and James Kobielus (@jameskobielus) at PentahoWorld in Orlando, Florida. They discussed Melissa’s data blueprint and integration with Pentaho, the importance of protecting user privacy and future projects in the financial world. (* Disclosure below.)

Embedded data quality solutions in Pentaho

Melissa’s focus on data quality involves mapping out a six-stage blueprint that evaluates everything from completeness and consistency of the information to accuracy and duplication. The company’s data quality solutions are embedded in the Pentaho stack.

In a retail example, a customer might use Melissa’s address verification and geo coding data with Pentaho’s tools to prevent packages from being misdelivered. “We bring the data piece of that and Pentaho brings all of the other elements to make a combined blueprint,” Gaddy said. “There’s some patents and proprietary technology that we have which give us a unique approach in how to profile that data and how to make that profile information actionable within Pentaho.”

Melissa’s data is highly comprehensive, which gives rise to potential concerns around privacy and the protection of sensitive personal information. “Our 30 years in the business really gives us insight into how to protect the data in ways that ensure the quality of it but also make sure that it is not used for nefarious purposes,” Gaddy explained.

In addition to retail applications, Melissa has been making inroads in the financial services sector. Early in November, the company announced Personator World, a cloud-based identity and verification engine for financial institutions.

“We’re already talking with Hitachi Vantara about doing a financial services [blueprint],” Gaddy said, hinting at a possible partnership with the industrial internet of things platform provider.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of PentahoWorld. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for PentahoWorld. Neither Hitachi Vantara, the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE