The developer-led data platform isn’t new at MongoDB Inc., but what is new is the advent of artificial intelligence — something that led the company to spring to action.

But in some ways, the company’s developer data platform was “prescient,” according to Mindy Lieberman (pictured, right), chief information officer of MongoDB. 

“It’s all about data and applications on top of data,” she said. “I look at it, for IT, as a portfolio. There’s some that is built; there is some that is bought. When you can’t go to the market and find things that are fit for purpose, you have to build. And to have a developer platform available, and I get good pricing, that can’t be beat.”

Lieberman and Tara Hernandez (left), vice president of developer productivity at MongoDB, spoke with theCUBE industry analyst John Furrier at the MongoDB .local NYC event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how to approach security, the role of AI and how developers are driving things forward. (* Disclosure below.)

Data in everything

These days, data is ubiquitous across entire enterprises, and companies need to be careful about how they manage it, according to Lieberman.

“You have to figure out ways to gather [data], to disseminate it, to cleanse it. So it’s all about the data,” she said.

On the developer side of things, whether it comes to testing or analysis, it’s critical to be mindful of how customer data is managed and how to build guardrails so developers aren’t looking at anything they aren’t supposed to, according to Hernandez. That also goes for ensuring that data is saved in a safe way, without getting in the way.

“That’s what DevSecOps is. That idea of a shift left is interesting, not because it’s making the develops more acutely aware of security — I mean, that’s a little part of it — but it’s that we ideally have created a platform where they don’t have to worry about it,” Hernandez said. “But they get the benefit of the protections that were built into how they do their development.”

Open-source has proven that developers are driving the bus. So, what are the operations good enough to enable developers and not foreclose them from being curious, experimental and playful with code? Aside from providing developer tooling to experiment with and figure out what works versus what is hype, MongoDB’s goal is focused on collaboration and a “very light touch” on coordination, according to Lieberman.

“Basically, we are saying yes to safe cases. We are trying to shorten the process to make sure that people can get their hands on things early and often. We test, and learn, and then expand,” she said.

MongoDB is based on open-source technology at its heart, which enables people to grab the community build or go to GitHub to grab the source, according to Hernandez. That applies to technology like ChatGPT too.

“One of the first things we said is, we took a quick pass and like, ‘You want to play with ChatGPT?’” Hernandez said. “Point it at the public repos, because the guardrail is already public.”

The internal stuff can be worked on as fast as possible, but there’s no reason that the company couldn’t have a reasonable set of policies to get started, Hernandez added.

Here’s the complete video interview with Mindy Lieberman and Tara Hernandez, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the MongoDB .local NYC event:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the MongoDB .local NYC event. Neither MongoDB Inc., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE