Dismantling the vault: scaling to a data mesh during a 5x merger

What happens when a rock-solid data architecture becomes your biggest bottleneck? Axway's data services team relied on a centralized Data Vault on dbt Core to manage 15+ SaaS applications, a highly auditable foundation. Then Axway merged with SBS, scaling from 1,000 to 5,000+ employees overnight. Simultaneously, domains like Marketing and R&D demanded autonomy to build AI-driven data products. The centralized team couldn't keep up.

The solution: a pivot to data mesh and a migration from dbt Core to the dbt platform to safely decentralize ownership. This session gives you the practical playbook: recognizing when a centralized model holds back business speed, the steps to migrate from dbt Core to the dbt platform under merger pressure, and how to govern a mesh by leveraging the dbt platform's cross-project references and data contracts to empower 5,000+ employees without creating data chaos.