Companies need to know precisely how their data is being used and how that data can be used to create competitive advantage. To know these things, a company needs to manage and use its meta data. Meta data is information, documented in IT tools, that improves both business and technical understanding, of data and data-related processes. When you break this definition into pieces it tells us what meta data is, where it can be found, how it can be helpful, and who it will help. Meta data will become increasingly important over the next fifteen years.
Every company has meta data.
There is no question about that. Databases are built on meta data. Data models are built on meta data. This, on it's own, should make it obvious that managing meta data is important. But it doesn't.