Through the Looking Glass: Metadata at the Space Force and Beyond
Broadcast Date: May 14th, 2026
Modern enterprises operate across increasingly complex environments with hundreds – sometimes thousands – of databases, applications, and processing nodes. Understanding how all those systems connect, interact, and evolve has become one of the biggest challenges in data management and AI readiness.
This is where metadata becomes essential.
Register for this episode to explore how Looking Glass, a project with origins in the United States Space Force and further developed by George Mason University, is helping organizations gain deeper visibility into their complex “systems of systems.” Designed to improve awareness across highly distributed environments, Looking Glass uses metadata to help organizations better understand, manage, and transform their broader data ecosystems – what some describe as the enterprise supra-system.
We’ll also discuss how Hammerspace is leveraging advanced metadata management to orchestrate high-throughput AI workloads by separating metadata from the data path, enabling faster and more intelligent access to distributed data at scale.
Attendees will learn:
- Why visibility across modern distributed systems is so difficult
- How metadata enables deeper operational and architectural awareness
- How metadata-driven orchestration supports modern AI workloads
- What “system of systems” thinking means for enterprise data strategy
- How organizations can move toward “Level 5 knowing” through metadata intelligence
Host:
Eric Kavanagh
CEO at The Bloor Group
Eric has nearly 30 years of experience as a career journalist with a keen focus on enterprise technologies. He designs and moderates a variety of New Media programs, including The Briefing Room, DM Radio and Espresso Series, as well as GARP’s Leadership and Research Webcasts. His mission is to help people leverage the power of software, methodologies and politics in order to get things done.
Guests:
Mark Brady
Chief Scientist, TRMC
Senior Manager, KBR
David Flynn
CEO of Hammerspace
