The Goal – Transforming Enterprise Information Management Capabilities Maximizing the potential of information can be complex and multifaceted, particularly for larger organizations. Besides a new level of cooperation between business and IT leaders, more collaboration between application owners and data center managers is also needed. Data centers must be able to deliver more information more quickly to business applications. While sometimes not specifically stated in an Enterprise Information Management (EIM) plan, data centers are expected to maintain information security, enable information compliance, and improve efficiency through better information retention policies. Meanwhile, application owners working on Enterprise Information Management projects are tackling concepts such as Master Data Management (MDM), information delivery standards such as Extended Markup Language (XML), development of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA), and support for Cloud Computing models. These efforts are inextricably linked – One can't be completely successful without the other.
Master data management (MDM) deals with many business and IT initiatives, such as reducing IT and business costs, revenue growth and customer service enhancement, supporting data compliance, and service-oriented architecture (SOA) in more-complex, heterogeneous environments.
Gartner, Predicts 2009: Master Data Management Is Applicable in Down Economies and in Times of Growth / Andrew White, John Radcliffe, and Chad Eschinger / 19 December 2008 To manage complexity, many large organizations develop a layered model similar to the TCP/IP stack, where contributors are responsible for providing part of the overall solution to support other layers in the stack. The idea is to provide a simplified roadmap for multiple teams to follow, which can dramatically improve efficiency and effectiveness. Several models are available, including Gartner's Enterprise Information Management model and IBM's Information Agenda. Consultants tend to have a favorite model, but the decision to use a model is more important than the choice of model. Both of these models have proven to be effective. Midsized organizations have fewer systems and often simpler data integration issues, but they benefit greatly from a similar approach that helps them do more with a limited staff and budget. IBM client example: A midsized city and county government in the United States was able to improve information services to their citizens by migrating several old applications to a new, integrated ERP system. They also added a modern Disaster Recovery site that supports rapid failover for continuous information availability. The solution required consensus by elected officials and IT leaders, which was complicated; but the result was an award winning solution recognized by Inc. Magazine, a US publication for small and midsized organizations. Source: IBM
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