Data lakes are an enticing idea: pour all of a company's information--both structured and unstructured--into a single system, and then everyone can access it and analyze it on demand. It's a great idea, but in practice, actually getting that data back out of the lake and into the hands of the people who need it can be a lot more difficult than it sounds.

Kelly Stirman, CMO and vice president of Dremio, has been working with data for decades. In a past life, he worked on strategy at MongoDB, and before that, MarkLogic. In his latest role, he's tasked with helping companies find ways to solve their data lake problems. Chief among those problems, he said, is making that data usable by those who need it.