PEOPLE WHISPERS: MOVES, PROMOTIONS, AND MILESTONES*
Starting this month, we'll be splitting the trends in Corporate Whispers from the People Whispers series. Catch the latest monthly random thoughts, trend points, and corporate trends here. For the latest on career moves, promotions, and milestones, stay tuned here.
Congratulations to all! Thanks for your emails and alerts. If you’ve got a change or know of a promotion, keep dropping me a line! If you need a referral, don't hesitate to reach out to me via Linked In.
Jean-Sebastien Bardet became Application Portfolio Manager at Orange Business Services in March 2009. He is responsible for the Management of Portal and Business Intelligence domains within the health business unit of Orange Business Services - Almerys. Jean-Sebastien formerly was an advanced technology architect at Michelin and has served consulting roles at Steria, Sylis Group, and Cambridge Technology Partners.
Brian Benedict became Business Development Director at Aite Group in January 2009. Brian was a Star sales professional at Forrester Research and joins former Forrester Research alumni such as Ron Shevlin. Previous experiences include serving as the Board Member at AIIM International, Board of Directors at ARMA International, and Business Development Lead at InfoCurrent.
Posts Tagged ‘InfoSphere’
Monday’s Musings: Master Data Management – Do Styles of MDM Matter Anymore?
Published on February 2, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang
Three Architectural Styles Represent Different Technologies To Build MDM
In 2003, customer data hub (CDI), product information management, and master data management (MDM) vendors strived to differentiate themselves by architectural style. Each approach had its advantages and disadvantages. A religion about styles emerged overnight along with a hard core following. Here's a quick recap (see Figure 1):
Figure 1. The Three Architectural Styles of Master Data Management
The bottom line - choose a style that aligns with your project's business driver
While these approaches still exist, leading vendors such as D&B Purisma, IBM, Initiate Systems, Oracle, Oracle-Siebel, SAS DataFlux, and Siperian now have offerings in more than one style. This may make the question seem less relevant, however, its still important to understand the trade-offs while beginning your MDM journey. In fact, it's best to align the style and approach based on your business driver. Here's a high level summary:
- Cross-referenced registry delivers rapid results for operational efficiency business drivers. This approach is best suited for rapid implementation scenarios such as POC's that prove the value of master data. Also valuable when data can not be stored on-site. Pro's: Rapid implementation without having to agree on a common enterprise data model. Utilize existing source systems. Con's: Deduplication of source systems not addressed. Data quality must be solved in each independent source system.
- Hybrid harmonized reference enables compliance and regulatory business drivers. This approach allows the best of both worlds, especially when moving to a transactional operational data store is not politically feasible and data governance and stewardship activities are just starting up. Pro's: Single master copy of reference data. Uses links to access source system records. Model allows data quality efforts to be applied to shared master reference data. Con's: Synchronization with source systems can create some complexity if changes are not made in the hub.
- Transactional operational data store supports strategic business drivers. This approach provides a long term path for how legacy applications utilize data. Pro's: Single master copy of data. No fussing with latency or synchronization issues. Minimal mapping issues. Con's: Requires an agreed upon common enterprise data model to be used by all applications. History must be harmonized and requires extensive key mapping. Assumes homogeneity and requires tons of ETL and dedupe.
Event Report: IBM Unveils the Information Agenda at IOD 2008
Published on November 2, 2008 by R "Ray" Wang
(Photo: The show floor from IBM IOD 2008 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center Copyright © 2008 R Wang. All rights reserved.)
IBM's third annual Information On Demand event emerges as part of the "Must Attend" list of Enterprise Software pow wows. More than 7000 attendees were treated to 600 technical skill building sessions and 120 business leadership sessions. This year's theme focused on the need to create an Information Agenda to sustain a competitive advantage and achieve business optimization. Some interesting perspectives from the event:
- Business optimization growth is twice as fast than business automation growth. IBM makes the case that workforce productivity, customer profitability, financial risk insight, and other optimization applications gain more traction than automation apps like ERP, HR, Financials, and CRM. POV: The era of automation emphasis is coming to an end. After years of depositing data into systems, enterprises seek value from all the information in their ERP, CRM, or HR system. Users expect more than automation from systems and want actionable insight designed for roles that are proactively delivered.
- IBM is positioned for business optimization via its acquisitions in Information On Demand. The thesis - IBM is delivering information assets via DB2, FileNet, and Informix. Business value in this trusted information can be unlocked via InfoSphere and then realize optimized business performance via business intelligence (i.e. Cognos). POV: Delivering an Information Agenda requires a tightly integrated stack. This requires significant integration of canonical data models, business processes, meta data, and semantic information. While IBM has made progress in bringing together its acquisitions, at this point in time no vendor has truly delivered on this from a software basis. Considerable amounts of professional services help is still required for success.
- Customers desperately seeking access to "real-time" and "near-time" data from legacy apps.
- Everyone wants more device delivery choices.
- The stack war will be Blue vs Red in the next 3 to 5 years.
- Operational business intelligence critical for actionable insight.
- BI is not a luxury during a downturn but a necessity for success.
- Data archiving plays an interesting role in data optimization and meeting compliance requirements
- MDM continues to gain traction as deal volumes have picked up in Q3 and Q4. This could be the "last big spend" before 2009 as a VP of Apps at a large CPG firm expressed.
(Photo: View from Mix @ THE Hotel during the IBM Cognos reception - IOD 2008 Copyright © 2008 R Wang. All rights reserved.)
Copyright © 2008 R Wang. All rights reserved.