A New Model for the Enterprise

From MIKE2 Methodology

Contents 1 The Scope of Enterprise Information Management 1.1 A Growing Problem 1.2 The Scope Increases 2 A New Way of Viewing the Enterprise 2.1 Application Development 2.2 Infrastructure Development 2.3 Information Development 3 Moving Towards a Solution with MIKE2.0

The Scope of Enterprise Information Management

The scope of Enterprise Information Management is very extensive and covers many different types of information. Across a typical company, overlapping data repositories are accessed by a number of applications. Whereas multiple OLTP systems typically function off proprietary environments, MIS systems operate across an ODS or Data Warehouses serving an Enterprise business unit. Even without the inclusion of unstructured and semi-structured data, this ‘Info-Structure’ makes up a broad range of categories that are shown in the model to the right.

The challenge we face is that this "Info-Structure" is getting more complex over time: our information demands from our existing data assets are continuing to grow, whilst at the same time many organisations are increasing their number of systems, the connectivity between them, the data volumes they hold and their requirements for real-time information. Legacy and new packaged implementations share this trait, which creates the same data across multiple systems at varying levels of representation, quality, and freshness.

A Growing Problem

As technology has moved forward the problem has grown. Moving from the mainframe world where application functionality was always the key driver, integration (through batch) finally became more of a focus in the 70s and 80s. Client/Server technologies were complemented by more real-time integration in 90s, followed by the Internet boom, workflow-driven process automation and ubiquitous mobile computing environments. Whereas information-focused systems and information management technologies and techniques were certainly becoming more and more powerful in the last 30 years, these breakthrough technologies were increasing the information management goals and in many ways driving architectural decisions that made information management more difficult. With the goals of Application Development and Integration not always complementing the goals for Enterprise Information Management, most organisations have an Info-Structure that makes it difficult to get the answers they need, has significant data quality issues and is difficult to manage.

Therefore while the technology focus for the past 30 years has been much more biased toward developing business process and function, infrastructure, and integration capabilities. This imbalanced approach coupled with new technologies has resulted in a proliferation of information to be managed and has created the “information crisis” many organizations find themselves in today.

It’s not to say that people didn’t always think information was important, it’s that information management problems have been worsened through cycles of technology evolutions.

The Scope Increases

With all this complexity already underway, the problem starts to get worse in the turn of the century. This is because of the increasing necessity to also manage unstructured content. Unstructured content typically accounts for much larger of volumes of information in organsations and new technologies mean that there are few inhibitors from a storage perspective. Due to its nature it is oftentimes even more difficult to relate across a large organisation.

Having been brought to the forefront with web technologies, new regulations and the need to performs analysis as never before due to new security threats and increased competition, the information explosion is out of the bottle. From corporate fraud to personal protection acts, poor management of unstructured content leads to a number of disasters - for government authorities and the private sector.

A New Way of Viewing the Enterprise

Solving these issues requires technology, but it needs to be driven from a business perspective. It could be argued that business users know how important it is to have the right data and the real question is whether IT is giving it enough focus, considering:

• We have more systems and more connectivity than ever before
• Data quality problems cost companies hundreds of billions in lost revenue
• Data security problems are some of our biggest organisational threats
• Customer insight is the key to competition
• Users want information from the system now
• New regulations mean there are serious consequences for execs if there are data problems

The MIKE2.0 approach to Enterprise Information Management uses a new model - one that allows us to represent the complexity of Information and Integration and get a complete view of the enterprise. The lynchpin for our approach is complementary views of the Enterprise across the domains of Applications, Infrastructure (including Integration) and Information. The theme of the 3 distinct domains is consistent throughout our approach to Enterprise Information Management, and is reflected across areas such as key staff definitions, organisational structure and technology architecture.

Although there are overlaps in terms of function, technology, and vendor capabilities across these domains, there are distinct areas of responsibility associated with each domain and their implementation is conducted within a separate workstream.

Application Development

Traditionally, the Application Development Domain was thought to consist of primarily OLTP application development and MIS application development. This OLTP application development environment consists of a combination of legacy systems and Commercial Off-the-Shelf packages (COTS), each of which typically has their own custom or proprietary databases; the goal of OLTP application development is to develop applications focused on achieving specific business functionality.

Traditionally, this domain would also include MIS application development. Our model moves development of the information repository and integration capabilities of MIS application development into the new domain of Information Development. MIS analytics and reporting development functions stay within the domain of application development.

Proposing changes to the application development model seems appropriate, considering the complexity of changes in this area over the last 10 years:

• Off-the-Shelf Enterprise (OLTP) Applications
• Off-the-Shelf Workflow and Rules Engines
• Composite Applications (Integration-focused) Applications
• Business Intelligence (Information-focused) Applications
• Integrated Applications

As integration becomes more like infrastructure, we believe that composite application development and process-oriented development (workflow) will become more like application development than infrastucture and therefore include this work within the application development domain.

Infrastructure Development

The Infrastructure Development Domain provides the platforms (hardware, network, operating systems, etc.) to support system software. The Infrastructure Development Domain also includes the technologies that are used to interconnect system processes and data, encompassing migration of data off of legacy systems as well as processes automation and the design of composite application functions. Advanced Infrastructure Development includes bringing together a range of technologies into a unified, Services Oriented Architecture. Newer methods of integration such as Web Services are encompassed within this model, and are merely another mechanism for achieving the integration function.

We are moving towards standardization of all Infrastructure Development: platform infrastructure continues to be commoditized and we are making great advances through SOAs. The goal is to make integration just like platform infrastructure. To do this we make it:

• Standards Based
• Well-defined, inventoried and something we can procure on demand
• Reusable and Reliable
• Modular
• Loosely Coupled

This is an area where our greatest advances have come over the last 5 years and data integration is finally moving to a reusable model inline with application integration. Integration is still hard, but its getting easier.

Information Development

Information Development is a collection of best practices in information management. Conceptually, it is a new approach where information is "developed" on behalf of the Enterprise, supplemented with the data and metadata artifacts produced within the other domains.

The Information Development approach includes the area of enterprise data repository(s) development, (replacing the silos of MIS Application Development), modelling of data at rest, metadata development, information access and storage and a collection of capabilities involved in the analysis and correction of data; the goal is to have a “single” organisation in the enterprise responsible for Information Development.

In the past Information Development has not been seen as a separate domain, and has been coupled tightly to Application Development and Integration. Decoupling Information Development from the Application Development and integration processes does not create extra work; it is putting standards into place for how and when information should be exchanged and how certain types of information should be captured, presented, and shared.

In summary, Information Development is about:

• Driving an overall approach through an Information Strategy
• Enabling People with the right skills to build and manage new information systems while creating a culture of information excellence
• Moving to a new Organisational model that delivers an improved Information Management competency
• Improving Processes around Information Compliance, Policies, Practices and Measurement
• Delivering contemporary Technology solutions that meet the needs of today’s highly federated organisations

This Information Development approach enables:

• Real-time synchronisation and transformation of information between systems, automating integration and promoting reuse across a federated enterprise
• The exposure of shadow processes and business rules that are typically embedded inside application and integration functions as reusable metadata
• The standardisation of interchange information into a common enterprise format to avoid stovepipe "application-focused" integration
• Building integrated repositories of information for use by the enterprise as a whole
• Improved information quality in a proactive and reusable fashion
• Flexible access to search across structured, semi-structured and unstructured content and being able to supply this information in a consistent form to any channel
• The ability to make fact-based business decisions and drill-down, drill across and aggregate analytical information
• Being to measure the value of any information asset and the resulting business benefits of its improvement
• An organisation that is structured in the most efficient manner to deliver information solutions for the business

Information Development is the main area of focus for the MIKE2.0 Methodology.

Moving Towards a Solution with MIKE2.0

MIKE2.0 provides a methodology for Enterprise Information Management. This means there is some overlap into the Application Development Domain and significant overlap into Infrastructure Development, but it does not completely cover all of these areas. MIKE2.0 includes technology solutions, team structures, key skills sets, and delivery workstreams, encompassing each of these areas.

Although the approach proposed in MIKE2.0 won't provide a "silver bullet" to solving Information Management problems, the leadership team believes its a good start. An Information Development approach can help provide a mechanism to address this very complex problem of managing information and the business processes it supports whilst providing capabilities for dealing with information concepts in ways not possible in the past. This Information Development architecture can pave the way for robust application development and will permit pro-active infrastructure and information access to the Application Development environment. The capabilities it will enable will be complimented by emerging standards in business and technology and will provide a number of flexible paths for the enterprise to move forward in the years to come. Information Development - for the first time - can get ahead of the Application Development curve.