When Marshall McLuhan said in 1964 that “the medium is the message”, he was primarily speaking about the mediums of print, radio and television. As our industry grows in volume, variety and velocity, this statement remains an important touchpoint for examining our goals and how we create and investigate the content and structures that confront us today. Importantly, the industrial world today functions in what we observe to be a mullti-model ecosystem, with significant needs for harmonization and analytics. What we have learned is that in order to both understand and derive actionable insight from this dynamic world requires the adoption of multi-model techniques and platforms. In this presentation, this evolution and an approach to implementation is outlined and described as an extension of McLuhan’s statement, providing crucial grounding in today’s complex industrial data management landscape.