Why you need an information governance strategy for 2010

You say you already have a plan in place to guard your company’s data? Are you sure it has you adequately protected? While you certainly understand the need for data security – your sales challenges are tough enough without exposing your customer’s credit card information to a security breech, for example – the chances are good that in 2010 you will consider various options for improving the security of your data.  If you are going to protect your company’s most valuable asset — your data —  you will begin to view data security as a component of a more comprehensive information governance strategy.

The risks of internal or external threats to your company’s data are becoming more complex as the depth and breadth of your information expands rapidly and your data is shared with business partners, suppliers, and customers.  In addition, as companies begin to take advantage of cloud services for some of their workloads, additional complexity is added to the multitude of security concerns. Many companies have deployed a disjointed approach to securing, controlling, and managing its data making it hard to anticipate and prepare for constantly changing security risks. There are lots of different ways that unauthorized users may enter your network or otherwise steal your data.  Many companies typically have a distinct solution to combat each one individually and typcially can’t each of themprotect against all of them and. For example, access control, data encryption, network traffic monitoring, vulnerability testing, and auditing may all be monitored with independent applications.

There is a good reason why many companies find they need to deploy lots of different solutions to effectively govern its information. Some of the most innovative solutions have come from emerging companies who have built a niche around a particular vertical market or some segment of the information security market. So you deploy the best solution for you biggest challenges and move on. However, as you begin to think more holistically about your needs for information governance, you will want to ensure that information security solutions are well integrated. This is one reason why emerging companies with an information security solution have become desirable acquisition candidates for larger software vendors.

Guardium, a privately-held company based in Massachusetts, is one of the most recent examples of this trend. When IBM announced its acquisition of the company in the last week of November, Guardium moved from a fast growing startup to one of the pillars of the IBM information governance strategy.The company’s technology helps clients with some of the most challenging issues around unauthorized access to critical data. Their solutions provide secure access to enterprise data – across many different database environments such as IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Teradata and others.  In addition, customers can reduce operational costs by automating regulatory compliance tasks. While many companies may have the ability to monitor one database at a time, Guardium brings added value by enabling companies with complex environments to monitor databases across their organization.

This acquisition aligns well with IBM’s strategy to provide customers with a well-integrated and comprehensive approach to information management. IBM has spent in the range of $12 Billion over the past five years to add software assets that will help companies to make more intelligent decisions and realize more business value from their information.

Do you have an analytics strategy and why should you care?

After just returning from IBM’s Information on Demand (IOD) Conference in Las Vegas, I would like to take this opportunity to virtually whisper just one word in the ear of a current day Benjamin Braddock, “analytics”. Many businesses have spent the past 25 years or so automating and streamlining business processes in order to drive improvements in efficiency and productivity.  But now, it is becoming apparent that these businesses expect their future success will increasingly depend on how skillfully they manage, govern, and analyze information. Businesses are applying analytical techniques to business information to help reduce risk and increase the certainty that they are making the right decisions.

IBM has, in fact, spent $12 Billion in software investments (both organic multiple acquisitions like SPSS, Cognos, Filenet, iPhrase, and Ascential Software, just to name a few) over the past 4-5 years to ensure it will be able to support its customers in their quest to unlock the business value of information. In addition, in April of 2009 IBM announced a new organization comprised of 4000 consultants focused on advanced business analytics and business optimization – teams with skills in applying business intelligence technologies like mathematical modeling, simulation, data analytics, and optimization techniques.

In an era of intense competition, tight credit, and cost concerns across global and vertical markets, this focus on getting the most value from the information you have makes a lot of sense. Companies find they are processing more information than ever before, but less of this information is being accurately and adequately used.  The quantity of available data that a business needs to manage and understand has skyrocketed along with the increase in instrumented and intelligent products. For example, RFID tags that are embedded in manufactured products,  plants and animals generate an enormous amount of data in efforts to control inventories and improve security and safety.  Trying to make decisions with inadequate,  inaccurate, or untimely  information is like driving a fast sports car down the highway with a very large blind spot impeding your view of the truck approaching on your side. You need to know about the obstacles that might appear in  your pathway before you try to make a “real-time” correction and steer your car (or your business) of a cliff.  So, students and business leaders alike please take note, I see some “analytics” in your future.

Can software developers leverage social networking?

If you are a software developer, the chances are pretty good that you’ve across  IBM’s developer Works. With approximately 8 million registered users this site has received a lot of use by developers looking for resources on coding, standards, and technical details on  software languages like Java or  applications like Lotus Notes.  Lots of great information, but let’s face it –traditional web environments  feel a little static once you begin to use social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter.   This is why I was interested to learn about IBM’’s recent introduction of My developerWorks – a transformation of developer Works that incorporates many of the attributes of social networking.

Why is this important for developers? Technology is changing too fast and the pace of the work environment it too intense for most developers to gain new skills quickly. You can research and learn a lot of material on your own, but you can get a lot smarter and produce higher quality results if you have an effective way of learning from others and collaborating across teams.   Given the economic realities of 2009, many software developers recognize that time spent keeping up with emerging technologies and understanding the business value of IT projects may make a real difference in meeting tight deadlines at work, getting a promotion or even landing a new job. These software developers often gain a lot of their information by following bloggers in their special area of interest or blog themselves to reach out to their peers. They use online reference sources, Linked In, Facebook, and Twitter to find solutions to a tough problem and keep in touch with colleagues.  My developer Works was designed to enable developers to  incorporate many of these resources and tools into one place.

Social networking is changing the way people meet, interact, and share information.  That doesn’t mean you can always make the right connections and get the right  information  in your specific technical area.   You may know you need help with a problem, but you don’t know where to find  the answer.  You may expect that somewhere in your own large company there is an expert with the expert knowledge to help you out, but it take s a week to find him because he is located in another continent.  My developer works is designed to help developers find the technical communities that will help them speed up this process. These are some of the things  that I think developers will like about My developer Works:

• The ability to create your own view by adding  feeds for favorite bloggers and online forums
• Easy ways to identify and find subject matter experts using tools  like virtual business cards
• New ways to share ideas and project details with  work teams
• Use of  keywords and tagging to locate people to help with your research and skill development

My expectation is that the true benefits of My develop Works  to developers will go beyond having one coordinated portal for  research  and blogging or twitter feeds. The unique dynamics of social software enable people to gain value from non-predictable events. It is hard to predict the right formula or set of circumstances that will lead to innovation. You sometimes get great ideas from following unplanned threads or from pulling together information across many different environments. Developers should be able to use My developerWorks to more easily locate  the right circle of  industry experts and business colleagues to help foster personal growth and innovation.

In a fast-paced work environment, time  often feels like your most limited resource. The business needs to get products to market faster and there is pressure on IT to deliver more efficient solutions in shorter time frames, and with  lower budgets.  We often needs answers faster than we can even think of the question. MyDeveloper Works is designed to help developers to become more productive at their jobs and have more fun doing it.

Getting Smart about SOA at IBM IMPACT

Just after I returned from last month’s IBM SOA IMPACT Conference, the Hurwitz team started to interview companies for case studies to be included in the second edition of SOA For Dummies. So for me, one of the benefits of attending IMPACT was getting a feel for some of the key trends in customer SOA implementations in preparation for this research.

I was particularly interested in the “Smart SOA” theme introduced at IMPACT. It seemed an apt description based on the large number of participants (6000 customers and partners) and the diversity and quantity of customer presentations (over 250 across 8 different subject matter tracks) that took place during the week.

But I must admit, initially I wasn’t quite sure about the significance of using the word smart. Does implementing SOA make you smart? Do you need to get smart before you can bring SOA to your company? Or as Drew Carey, the “special guest” at the conference kickoff, joked about the “Smart SOA” theme by saying something like, “What does IBM mean by this…smart SOA as opposed to the stupid SOA our competitors sell?”

After just a few days in Las Vegas with lots of smart IBM customers and partners it was pretty easy to understand why Smart SOA does a good job of describing the current level of customer adoption of this approach. Based on my observations at IMPACT 2008, I see three major trends supporting the scenario that customers, partners, and vendors are all getting smarter about SOA.

Getting Smart about bringing IT and Business together.

Companies have moved very quickly to create a business driven (rather than IT driven) approach to their SOA initiatives. Sandy Carter, IBM VP SOA and WebSphere, cited some impressive statistics supporting this trend in her IMPACT keynote on SOA deployments. She quoted a recent IBM customer survey which indicated that the percentage of SOA initiatives requiring business involvement jumped from 30% in 2006 up to 70% in 2007. IT executives want to get the business involved with their SOA initiatives from the beginning and this is having an impact on how companies are selecting a SOA vendor. IT-centric approaches are out. Customers are looking to their SOA vendors for help in implementing SOA within the context of the specific requirements and best practices relevant for their own industry. Results of IBM’s survey of customers indicate that the #1 criteria used to select a SOA vendor is business expertise.

And just as customers have gotten smarter about improving the collaboration between business and IT, IBM has gotten smarter about capitalizing on its deep vertical industry experience to help companies achieve success with SOA. IBM reports an 80% win rate on SOA related deals when they engage the customer in a Business Value Assessment. This is a set of tools designed to be used with both the customer LOB and IT management to ensure that the customer receives industry specific ROI business cases, key process models, and a SOA solution proposal. In addition, IBM partners and systems integrators like LiquidHub and Perficient, who both presented at IMPACT, are finding that they have more success by using industry specific knowledge to support customers in developing a SOA Roadmap based on business process and governance.

Getting smart about educating developers, architects, and business analysts about SOA

Just a few years ago, acting in the role of SOA evangelist at a very large organization could get sort of lonely. There weren’t a lot of other people around with a similar focus so sharing ideas about SOA best practices was not all that common. Now there are organizations like the SOA Consortium, a SOA advocacy group comprised of end users, service providers, and technology vendors, that use forums and online collaboration tools to share information on SOA best practices and help establish standards. By the way, the SOA Consortium (part of the OMG) has a SOA case study contest underway right now with submissions due by June 30.

At IMPACT IBM announced a Smart SOA social network to facilitate communication between IT and business executives who would want to explore issues and share ideas about SOA. The social networking experience can help people gain the education they need when they need it. The need for SOA specific education is seen as a number one priority by many companies. Lack of having sufficient staff with the right skills is still seen as a major inhibitor in developing a SOA infrastructure.

If companies are going to have a business focused approach then you need to have more developers who understand the business and business analysts with a stronger understanding of technology. Some companies have been very successful at retraining developers who may have strong mainframe skills, for example, that are no longer in such high demand so they can be participants on the SOA team. Architects are using online collaborations tools like Twitter to expand knowledge of SOA and business skills.

Getting Smart about Scaling SOA

There was a big change this year at IMPACT with many customers beginning to move forward based on the success of their early deployments of business services. I talked to many customers who are now moving to scale with broader SOA implementations across business units. Customers understand that it is wise to select an initial SOA project that services a major need of the business and will show ROI and success relatively quickly. However, scaling SOA requires a different level of attention to enterprise issues such as process integrity and latency.

For example, one insurance company director of enterprise architecture told me about what it takes to scale. This director told me that his organization had deployed its first services seven or eight years ago. He has learned a lot of lessons over the years. For example, he recommends that organizations should not try to scale SOA to the enterprise level without automated governance — regardless of how large and expert the IT team happens to be. His team has found out the hard way that a lack of SOA governance will result in a failed SOA deployment.

Getting smart with SOA is certainly a journey for many of the companies we have talked to over the years. It is easy to get caught up in the excitement. Customers that I talked to at last year’s IMPACT conference were excited that there were other professionals just like them in attendance. This year, there were signs that customers are moving to the next level and maybe even getting smarter.

What happens when your BI vendor gets acquired?

With all of the acquisitions happening in the business intelligence space, customers are in a state of confusion. What do all of these changes mean — both short term and long term? In my view, it is best to take a pragmatic approach to this changing market landscape. This acquisition spree in BI is impacting as many as 80,000 customers who use business intelligence software from Hyperion, Business Objects, or Cognos. What should customers be asking their vendors about the future directions of their products? All three BI vendors have either just been acquired or are soon to be acquired by three large IT companies – Oracle, SAP, and IBM, respectively. Is it business as usual or do the IT managers need to alter their business relationships and plans for business intelligence implementations now that a wave of consolidation is underway?

Customer concerns about the re-alignment in the business intelligence area tend to fall into three categories: impact on legacy environments, impact on future buying decisions, and technical innovation. Management issues will vary with how business intelligence software has been deployed at their companies and how well integrated this software has been with other information management software.

Legacy environments. Many companies tend to use BI tools for traditional management reporting. In general, they like to stick with what they know and what their users are trained to use. Therefore, they want to be assured that they can continue using the familiar reporting tools in the same way. While most managers assume that once an acquisition is complete, there will be new operating efficiencies. What they don’t always know is whether those efficiencies will translate to savings. They also would like to understand how the company might benefit from the fact that a larger company with more resources has bought the company they have been dealing with. How will my company benefit from the acquisition? Will there be any changes in the sales and service teams? What about pricing issues and planned upgrades?

Typically, it will take a while before changes are evident. For example, if you are getting good value from your use of Crystal Reports—the Business Objects’ reporting solution designed to support business modeling, analysis, and decision making – it really may not matter to you which company purchased Business Objects.

Ironically, some of the most important issues that might emerge happen when customers merge with each other. For example, one company might have standardized on Cognos for its analysis and reporting while the company being acquired uses Business Objects as a standard. Since large enterprises rely on business intelligence software to gain insight into production, sales, revenue, or other data across divisions and subsidiaries, too many tools may make decision making more difficult.

It is interesting that these acquisitions are hitting the market at the same time that companies are trying to move from a departmental view of data to an enterprise perspective. A unified and standardized approach to information management across the enterprise is becoming a top priority. Companies that have accumulated many different BI vendor software may use this time of change to re-evaluate a BI strategy.

Typically companies are used to managing multiple software components from multiple vendors. The expectation is that the consolidation of two or more of a single vendor will lead to benefits resulting from the tighter integration of the products. This is often the best outcome in terms of support, training, and management. However, this is typically a multi-year effort by the vendors building a unified portfolio based on acquired software. As businesses move from a traditional siloed single purpose data warehouse to information integration and analytics, having one vendor to call is often a welcome change as companies try to simplify the management of its infrastructure.

Impact on Future Buying Decisions

The situation may be a little different if a customer is in the middle of a proof of concept (POC) for a project designed to develop a single view of a company’s customer base. How will the recent acquisitions in the business intelligence market impact how businesses to move forward?

Consider the example of a large bank that had recently made a significant acquisition. The bank wanted to understand its most profitable customers across the newly merged company. Customer history and sales data was retained in a siloed manner by line of business and there was no integration between the data for the two companies. This company used Cognos for many of their executive level reports, but now management had raised concerns about data quality.

In order to develop a single view of customer they needed to look for incompatibilities and inconsistencies in the disparate data sources. These data sources needed to be integrated and IT needed to assure the business that the information was accurate, complete, and trust worthy. The bank selected Informatica to provide the software needed to help with the integration and to improve the quality of its data.

Informatica has a comprehensive solution for data integration and data quality. In addition, just a few months ago Informatica and Cognos announced an expansion of their strategic relationship. This partnership fit well into the CIO’s priority to consolidate all the many disconnected vendors in use in IT and to ensure that the integrations between different applications are as tightly integrated as possible. Now, suddenly Cognos is part of IBM and a direct competitor to Informatica. What should the CIO do? Certainly IBM is committed to supporting all of Cognos’ existing partnerships. You should not have to change your plans because of the acquisition, however there are questions to ask about how things will change in the future.

Innovation

All the BI vendors mentioned above have well-established partner relationships with emerging information management software companies. There has been a lot of customer support for the creation of tighter integrations between the information management infrastructure and the business intelligence layer. Companies have recognized that the reporting structure becomes meaningless if the supporting data cannot be trusted.

The partnerships have been important because much of the important innovation comes from small emerging companies. Partnerships with major players makes it easier for the company to leverage innovation with lower risk. The established players can provide the integration with the analytics and reporting technology. As companies attempt to unlock much of the data that has been previously unreachable at the enterprise level, it will become much more important to have a unified approach to information quality, information integration, and business intelligence. Market consolidation will help ensure that innovation is better utilized in a predictable manner.