Data Integration Is Now A Business Problem – That’s Good by John Schmidt.
From the post:
Since the advent of middleware technology in the mid-1990’s, data integration has been primarily an IT-lead technical problem. Business leaders had their hands full focusing on their individual silos and were happy to delegate the complex task of integrating enterprise data and creating one version of the truth to IT. The problem is that there is now too much data that is highly fragmented across myriad internal systems, customer/supplier systems, cloud applications, mobile devices and automatic sensors. Traditional IT-lead approaches whereby a project is launched involving dozens (or hundreds) of staff to address every new opportunity are just too slow.
The good news is that data integration challenges have become so large, and the opportunities for competitive advantage from leveraging data are so compelling, that business leaders are stepping out of their silos to take charge of the enterprise integration task. This is good news because data integration is largely an agreement problem that requires business leadership; technical solutions alone can’t fully solve the problem. It also shifts the emphasis for financial justification of integration initiatives from IT cost-saving activities to revenue-generating and business process improvement initiatives. (emphasis added)
I think the key point for me is the bolded line: data integration is largely an agreement problem that requires business leadership; technical solutions alone can’t fully solve the problem.
Data integration never was a technical problem, not really. It just wasn’t important enough for leaders to create agreements to solve it.
Like a lack of sharing between U.S. intelligence agencies. Which is still the case, twelve years this next September 11th as a matter of fact.
Topic maps can capture data integration agreements, but only if users have the business leadership to reach them.
Could be a very good year!