Companies are increasingly becoming software-driven, requiring new approaches to software architecture and data integration. The "data mesh" architectural pattern decentralizes data management by organizing it around domain experts and treating data as products that can be accessed on-demand. This helps address issues with centralized data warehouses by evolving data modeling with business needs, avoiding bottlenecks, and giving autonomy to domain teams. Key principles of the data mesh include domain ownership of data, treating data as self-service products, and establishing federated governance to coordinate the decentralized system.