Rick Sherman
The “Force-Field” of Data Governance
Data governance has a big job: establishing the processes, policies, standards, organization, and technologies required to manage and ensure the availability, accessibility, quality, consistency, auditability and security of data in an organization.
In many instances it is seen as too overwhelming or daunting to undertake, like Don Quixote chasing windmills. Too often people are immobilized by analysis paralysis and fail to move forward after initial meetings and excitement. But don’t stop before you get started. Data governance is like the force-field around your data, protecting that “single version of the truth.”
OK, so maybe “force-field” isn’t be best analogy. Perhaps data governance would be better explained with a story. After all, there’s nothing “sci-fi” about reality or customer success. (more…)
MDM: It’s Not About the Product – Part 2
In the Forrester Research, Inc. Information Management blog, analyst Rob Karel discusses “Master Data Management 2007: The Year In Review.” His truly insightful set of observations:
“…the most valuable and insightful information about the evolution of the MDM market comes from the Forrester customers I speak to every day. …I rarely field questions about MDM vendor selection. Regarding MDM, these customers are more concerned about data governance, organizational readiness, architectural strategy, business case development, prioritization, and the biggie — do we really need to worry about MDM? If so, why? What does it all mean? I’m happy to report that it means you are asking the right questions at the right time.”
Too often customers are fixated on products, and analysts are discussing products as if they alone are the “solutions” to companies’ data challenges. (more…)
“IT’s Wonderful Life” – Yes, IT is
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.”
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It’s about time for Enterprise Data Warehousing (EDW)
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.
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Your 2008 Data Integration Plans, Part 5:Adding Real-Time Business Intelligence to your Information Portfolio
There are two things I hate in discussions about real-time business intelligence.
First, pundits cite great examples of the business need for real-time BI, but then go overboard by assuming that every report and analysis needs to be done using real-time data.
The reality is most analysis is done looking at specific timeframes (daily, weekly or monthly), trending (YTD) or period over period analysis. Up-to-the minute data would be discarded or create “noise” in analysis. The cost both to load and then to filter out the irrelevant real-time data for analysis is much greater than most enterprises are willing or able to spend. And it just makes things too complex.
The second area that riles me is that people, even high powered architects who should know better, oversimplify real-time BI. As I mentioned when I discussed SOA, too often real-time BI is seen as solely accessing data rather than involving more complex data integration. Other than accessing very limited data such as data related to an individual customer, much reporting and analysis involves gathering and transforming data from many locations. This requires data integration rather than just data access.
Too many times enterprises do something because it’s technically possible rather than because the business needs it. Technology implemented in the absence of business value is NOT a project you want to deliver in 2008.
So what should you deliver in 2008 in relation to real-time BI? The two key ingredients to success:
1. Design your architecture to match real-time data with who needs it rather than burdening everyone with real-time data. Most of them don’t need it.
2. Incorporate real-time data integration to support your real-time BI processes.
Note: data integration is not just a batch, ETL function. You can implement data integration with ETL, EAI, EII or via SOA. Real-time BI needs data integration so you should use your data integration suite to implement what your BI and business users’ needs are regardless of whether they need yesterday’s data or what happened a few seconds ago.
It’s the data (integration) that enables BI
Ben Worthen in his Wall Street Journal “Business Technology” blog “The Death of Gut Instinct” discusses how:
“For the third year in a row, CIOs (surveyed by Gartner) said that ‘business intelligence software,’ which organizes and analyzes the data companies collect, was their top tech priority.”
Ben further comments:
“…information-technology departments have used those (previous BI) projects – which usually involved building a giant data repository and installing software that can look for trends in that data – as stepping stones to greater glory.”
I am very excited by the continuing growth of business intelligence and performance management efforts across enterprises of all sizes and all industries. There is real business value to these projects. Business people realize it, not just IT folks.
There is something, however, that concerns me because it is either being left unsaid or, worse, being taken for granted. Business people, and in many cases industry analysts and pundits, associate an IT project with the customer facing software. An IT project is then considered a Business Objects, Cognos or Hyperion project rather than, say, a financial data warehouse project.
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The Disconnect with Data Integration and SOA
Many companies are building Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) initiatives apart from data integration projects. Since information is one of the key ingredients to creating business value from SOA initiatives, how could this disconnect be occuring?
A few characteristics of IT projects are causing this application stovepipe to happen.
First, IT has, for decades, continually developed applications or implemented infrastructure on a project-by-project basis. Rather than viewing their enterprise holistically, companies continually look at their projects with a narrow focus. Although this limits scope and maybe improves a project’s chance to be completed, it is shortsighted since too much overlapping or conflicting work occurs.
Second, IT has a tendency to segment its work by the technology that is used rather than what processes are being built. IT assumes that since SOA is “new,” it must be different than all the “mature” data integration software technologies such as ETL, EAI and EII.
Finally, companies keep looking for the “silver bullet” of technology to solve all their data problems. Why work on an overall data integration approach when SOA solves it all with no mess or fuss? If only you could buy data integration in a can!
What should companies do?
• Establish an Integration Competency Center (ICC) that has responsibility for an enterprise architecture
• Develop an overall data or information integration architecture
• Implement the data integration architecture using SOA along with ETL, EAI, EII and data quality software
SOA can provide tremendous business benefits if driven by implementing a data integration architecture that provides business people with the information they need for running and managing the business.
But if SOA is driven solely as an infrastructure or technology initiative do not be surprised if the business group questions its value and pulls funding when they don’t see an ROI.
MDM is not a product
Rob Karel, Forrester Research, Inc. (FORR), wrote an interesting year-end review of his 2007 Master Data Management (MDM) forecasts in the Forrester Information Management blog on December 26th. Rob hits on a few themes that I am constantly discussing with clients and colleagues:
“While all of the product development, marketing, and M&A activity coming from the MDM vendors is interesting and entertaining, the most valuable and insightful information about the evolution of the MDM market comes from the Forrester customers I speak to every day. Unlike my coverage of more mature data integration technologies like ETL where vendor selection is the most common question asked, I rarely field questions about MDM vendor selection. Regarding MDM, these customers are more concerned about data governance, organizational readiness, architectural strategy, business case development, prioritization, and the biggie — do we really need to worry about MDM? If so, why?
What does it all mean? I’m happy to report that it means you are asking the right questions at the right time. …be sure your organization is prepared to deal with the cross-functional and technical complexities of adopting a master data management strategy….”
My contention has always been that MDM is not a product solution, but a process with the key ingredients being people and politics. If you don’t have data governance and an organization ready to commit to an ongoing effort to implement and keep MDM going, then it does not matter what product you buy.
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Cautious Tech Spending for 2008?
No longer do companies keep increasing tech spending “like it’s 1999.” Companies have become more selective in what they invest in. The key word is “investment.” Most companies don’t just go out and buy the latest and shiniest technology, no matter how much hype there is, unless there is a solid business ROI (return on investment.) No discretionary project gets funding without the ROI.
I am an avid reader of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Business Technology blog written Ben Worthen. In his post “Oracle and Accenture: Not a Rising Tide”, December 20, 2007, he postulates that although Oracle and Accenture just had terrific quarters and are forecasting good times in 2008, tech spending will be flat and other tech vendors will not experience the same solid growth as these two companies. Unlike in 1999, there will not be a rising tide for all tech companies. I couldn’t agree more.
I don’t know (nor does anyone else, really) whether tech spending will be flat or will grow. (It could grow because we will avoid a recession or because people’s estimates are too conservative, as they have been the last few years.)
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Your 2008 Data Integration Plans, Part 4:Getting your Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) in Order
I am seeing a disconnect between many clients’ 2008 plans for service-oriented architecture (SOA) and the expectations they are setting with the business groups that are funding them.
The good news is that people have been pervasive in getting sponsorship and funding for SOA projects based on anticipated business benefits. The bad news is that despite good technology, many IT projects fail when business group don’t get what they think they were promised. It’s like the old saying “you can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?”
The promise of SOA is to establish reusable services that can be deployed throughout the enterprise to deliver accelerated application implementation at lower risk and effort. Reusable business services reduce redundant or overlapping development efforts and increase IT productivity. They also enable applications that were previously siloed to exchange data and interoperate.
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