Informatica Enterprise Data Management

Your 2008 strategy and budget are probably all set. Now it is just a matter of tactics to implement your business and IT objectives for next year. Have you examined the top business initiatives and IT projects in the context of integration?

Unfortunately, companies historically design and deploy business initiatives and their supporting IT projects in business and application silos. They justify these projects with a solid business return on investment (ROI) based on very high expectations of what the business will get. The expectation may involve great looking dashboards, terrific visualization, real-time access and widely distributed reports.

But many of these projects will fall into what Gartner Research describes as the “trough of disillusionment.” Too many times these projects will be labeled failures, not because the technology was not terrific, but because the data was not correct or consistent. A beautiful visual display or enabling pervasive data access is only of value to the business if that data is right. It’s all about the data. And that’s all about the integration.
What do you do to avoid that “trough” yet again? You need start by examining the slate of 2008 IT projects to identify those where integration is a critical success factor (CSF). And then determine if your enterprise is designing, developing and deploying this integration in a holistic fashion or if they are being built in business and application silos. In other words, being set up for failure.

If you have an Integration Competency Center (ICC) it is likely that you have gone through this exercise. (If not, then do it!) If you don’t have an ICC, it is even more essential that you take the time now to critically examine your enterprise’s IT projects for integration components. Your need to help the business be successful with your 2008 IT projects and achieve the business return on their data assets that they are lacking today.

The key to this process is really identifying the projects where integration and data are the CSFs. Often, business and even IT people develop budgets without genuinely realizing the integration component of their projects.

Some of the top projects that you need to critically examine for 2008 are:
• Renovating or replacing a data shadow system (these are often called spreadmarts or other names)
• Master data management (MDM), customer data integration (CDI) or product information management (PIM)
• Service oriented architecture (SOA)
• Real-time business intelligence (BI)

You need to prevent your business initiative and IT projects from creating new silos. Avoid that “trough of disillusionment” at the end of those projects. We will discuss each of the above projects in subsequent posts.