Informatica Enterprise Data Management

We all know how mandates such as Sarbanes-Oxley place a burden on many businesses, by requiring that they be able to document the reliability and quality of data. Most major mandates, which have now been in place for several years, have given rise to a whole industry dedicated to reporting. In many companies, the equivalents of small departments have been kept busy 52 weeks a year doing little more than generating reports and reviewing data to meet compliance requirements.

Obviously, things can't go on like this. Rather than spending money to just keep simply meeting requirements, many companies are seeking to better integrate compliance into their day-to-day operations in a more automated, systematic form. In doing so, they seek to go far beyond meeting the letter of the law, to take the opportunity to improve and streamline their own processes - which will pay off in battling the challenges of an increasingly competitive marketplace.

By eliminating the silos that have separated data across the enterprise, as well as the silos that have pigeonholed the compliance efforts intended to gather and report this information, organizations can make impressive strides in moving forward with greater agility. In the process, automation can reduce the burden of paperwork and manual processes that drive up the costs of compliance.

Such "sustainable" compliance management can be built on top of three disciplines that already exist within most businesses today. These include governance, or the oversight of corporate activities and processes; risk management, or the identification, assessment and monitoring of risks and controls; and compliance management.  This integrated approach - known as Governance, Risk, and Compliance Management, or GRC, takes its three namesake disciplines and takes a more holistic approach to increasing information visibility and management. [Read more]

The most recent TDWI Boston Chapter meeting focused on MDM (Master Data Management). The keynote presentation titled “MDM: Data Salvation or the Next Round of Silos?” was followed by a panel discussion. The panelists included representatives from IBM, Oracle (Hyperion), SAP (Business Objects) and Kalido.

In keeping with TDWI principles, the panel discussion concentrated on the how’s and why’s of MDM in customer situations and avoided sales pitches. I moderated the panel discussion and was very impressed with the panelists’ knowledge and insights on their customers’ experiences in approaching and implementing MDM.

The panel discussed the most common characteristics that customers who are experiencing success in their MDM efforts have:

“Educated consumers”

There is a men’s clothing store that has an ad that says an educated consumer is our best customer. That is absolutely true in MDM. Companies that have been involved in data warehousing and enterprise data integration understand the complex and conflicting world of trying to get consistent, comprehensive and current master data or conformed dimensions in DW terminology.

Significant business participation

MDM is not a program that can be undertaken with IT alone. In fact, if you do not have business participation in the beginning there is little chance of success. IT has to sell the MDM program to the business and get real resource and time commitments.

Data governance program

Data governance is more important than what products you use to implement MDM. The old saying about garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) is absolutely true in MDM. You can’t cleanse data nor make it consistent unless you can define the data, business rules/transformations and performance measures you wish to use across your enterprise.

Enterprise Data Integration

Companies that have been implementing enterprise data integration efforts can leverage those efforts in their MDM program. They have gained an understanding of the complexities that a formal MDM effort will entail. For these companies MDM is not a new thing but simply taking their EDI efforts to the next level.

MDM is a journey and companies that have been in the trenches trying to address the problems of inconsistent data are well-positioned to take the next step.

It seems in recent years pundits and vendors alike have been applying the 2.0 label to everything and anything emerging across the technology plain. In some cases, the new label has stuck - witness the widespread adoption of the terms 'Web 2.0' and its business sibling, 'Enterprise 2.0.'

In some cases, it’s a case of marketecture, but yet, the 2.0 identifier does convey a certain sense of maturity – that a technology is moving to a new stage of sophistication, of engagement with the business and its end users.

There have been moves afoot to identify the next generation of data warehousing as "Data Warehouse 2.0." However, there are differences of opinion as to what exactly will constitute DW 2.0, and thus no clear standard sense of direction in the market. [Read more]

Are BI managers and professionals sometimes too eager to please the business? Are centralized BI efforts slowing down progress? Should BI teams address requirements before the business even asks for them? These questions may seem counter-intuitive, but Wayne Eckerson, director of research for TDWI, says that the best intentions for BI efforts in many organizations may actually result in sluggish projects, duplication of effort, and misaligned priorities between BI teams and the business. [Read more]

There’s no question that integrating analytical and transaction data to deliver “Pervasive Business Intelligence” can be a significant project for many enterprises. However, the good news is that it’s a capability that’s within the reach of many enterprises today. That’s the gist of a Q&A with three industry thought leaders, published in the latest edition of Intelligent Enterprise. [Read more]

I’ll admit it, as an older brother, I didn’t want my younger sister borrowing or bugging me for my prized possessions. I still hoard things at work, old computer equipment, mice, cables, all in the name of finding a use for them at some point. I just like to know they are there when you need them as you can see here.

Is data treated the same way within corporations? Do application owners like sharing their data with others? In my experience, no, they don’t. Ask any mainframe or ERP program manager about utilizing their production data for other purposes and I’m sure you’ll receive a litany of questions around impact to production systems, utilization costs, and complexity of access. And IT’s business request list for access to these precious resources is only growing. For many organizations, data access is a cultural problem.
[Read more]

Tom Davenport has a great post “IT’s Wonderful Life” in his interesting “The Next Big Thing” blog. With the backdrop of the holiday season and the sentimental movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” with Jimmy Stewart, he muses in his post about the positive things IT has contributed to companies. He cites Wal-Mart (WMT), various airlines and the banking industry as all having benefited from IT’s efforts.

I’d like to take his praise a step further by observing that all his examples are great references for the business benefit of enterprise data warehousing and enterprise data management.

All of these companies have positioned data as an enterprise asset that, when integrated and transformed, enables them to manage far better than if they were simply operating by “gut feel.”
[Read more]

As Don noted in his post “Why the “E” in EDW (Enterprise Data Warehousing)?” many companies have successfully implemented Enterprise Data Warehousing, producing great business ROI. Don talked about how the industry has evolved to better appreciate EDW.

While consulting to companies on data warehousing solutions I’ve noticed that companies not effectively deploying EDW fall into two camps:

• No real data warehousing effort. Instead they rely on their business applications to provide reporting and analysis capabilities.
• A central data warehouse has been created. But they conduct most analysis using databases (maybe called data marts) or data shadow systems created separately from the central DW.

If you are in either camp it may finally be time for you to pursue enterprise data warehousing.
[Read more]

Since launching the EDM blog in early 2007, we have focused on a wide variety of data management, Informatica usage and technology topics. In 2008, I will also be discussing my experiences and research in Enterprise Data Warehousing, an area that our customers have used our software and solutions to great success.

Enterprise Data Warehousing is a term that has been around for a long time. In the mid-90’s, Bill Inmon preached an enterprise approach to data warehousing that was based on a central repository of corporate data. With the technology at the time, success was only attainable by a few elite organizations at extreme levels of funding. Informatica pioneered an incremental data mart approach that led to years of prosperity in the Data Warehousing market for Informatica and customers using our technology for their data warehousing related projects.
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