Advances in both digital processing devices and in technologies to sample the focal and aperture planes of radio antennas is enabling observations of the radio sky with high spectral and spatial resolution combined with large bandwidth and field of view. As a consequence, survey mode radio astronomy generating vast amounts of data and involving globally distributed collaborations is fast becoming a primary tool for scientific advance. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will open up a new frontier in data intensive astronomy. Within the next few years SKA precursor telescopes will demonstrate new technologies and take the first major steps toward the SKA. Projects that path find the scientific journey to the SKA with these and other telescopes are currently underway and being planned. The associated exponential growth in data require us to explore new methodologies for collaborative end-to-end execution of data intensive observing programs.