Need for Metadata Services

I was introduced to the problem last year.  The need for a means for systematically collecting key contextual data.   To make the data of more value, for a longer time.   In O'Reilly:    We need open and vendor-neutral metadata services  " .... Comprehensive metadata collection and analysis can pave the way for many interesting applications.   ... "   by Ben Lorica.    Essentially a prediction problem for maximizing data assets.    Yet more important as we start to include IOT data sources.