Building Better Data Vaults: Organizing Data Structures for Speed, Savings, and Success

WWDVC 2026 | Stowe, Vermont April 27-30, 2026 - Doug Needham Building Better Data Vaults: Organizing Data Structures for Speed, Savings, and Success Cloud platforms like Snowflake make it easy to build pipelines. They do not make your data trustworthy. In this executive discussion, Doug Needham and Dan Linstedt explore why most modern data initiatives fail—not because of technology, but because of missing architecture. This session reframes cloud data strategy around Defensible Analytics—where data is not only delivered, but traceable, governed, and explainable. You’ll learn: Why cloud adoption ≠ data strategy How Data Vault stabilizes modern data platforms Why pipelines without semantic alignment create inconsistent results How to embed governance directly into architecture What it takes to scale analytics without losing control If your organization is investing in Snowflake, Databricks, or modern data platforms, this session answers the real question: Can you defend the analytics your system produces?