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Financial meltdown and shifting to Data Content Management

11/3/2010

Here is a very interesting quote by Michael Atkin, managing director of the Enterprise Data Management (EDM) Council, in the INTHEBLACK Journal of November: "Companies are starting to shift from data process management to data content management, which is fundamentally different".

Thanks a lot Michael. I fully agree with you and that's a bad indicator for Software AG who states that they have decided to put (locked in?) their MDM within their BPM directly; but how to manage business rules over ref/master data? It still remains a missing link for them and far away from their domains.

Actually, this is very acute for companies such as SAG, Informatica, Tibco, etc. to really understand the added-value of a MDM system. Indeed, it requires a huge background in the data modeling and data management field which is surely not the case of those companies. They are historic actors in the IT integration (EAI, ESB, ETL) and cleansing data quality tool. But the active data quality and the data governance brought by a real MDM system is a higher level of abstraction and operation.

To get full story of the active data governance, you can read the complete article by Tonny Wong where Michael Atkin gives its vision. By the way, Christophe Barriolade, CEO at Orchestra Networks, is also quoted in this article. You can access it here. This is very helpful to understand why and how a MDM system must be integrated.

Pierre Bonnet

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Software AG, Progress Software and others... all in a blind alley

10/22/2010

14 Comments

Historic Software Vendors are struggling to deliver something more sustainable than just a BPM glued on their EAI/ESB. It is high time for them to suggest added values! They understand that something is happening beyond their legacy IT bricks. That’s good news, but I am afraid they are still immature when I see their strange strategies.

Software AG has acquired a MDM solution and states they will integrate it with their BPM offering. But what about the business rules handle by processes? What is the interest of having flexibility at the levels of processes and data if business rules still remain implemented with a hard coding approach?

And what can we say about the Progress Software's strategy which is quite different from SAG? Indeed, Progress Software is working on the integration of their BPM with their very powerful CEP solution; it means Processes + Events and BRMS. They call that RPM: Responsive Process Management. But what about the data governance needed to bring reliable ref/master data to the CEP/BRMS, and then the BPM?

I think that IBM could build a relevant architecture as they hold the Ilog BRMS and strong BPM solutions, but they face a big concern with their heavy and ancient MDM offerings. There are too many software with insufficient integration. This is quite the same worry about Oracle, with a clear weakness in the MDM and data governance field. Tibco is not well positioned as their BRMS offering is just an OEM with Corticon and I don’t see any integration with their MDM as it is more an IT oriented data management system than a real and open data governance solution to business users.

Informatica still remains in the IT data integration area as their recent acquisition in the “MDM” landscape is not a real multi-domains MDM and more a type of CDI/PIM without the ability to integrate full BRMS and BPM approaches. SAP is not a player in the agnostic IT infrastructure landscape; they have to struggle against platforms as a service stemming from the cloud, such as Salesforce and force.com. I firmly believe they would have a strategic interest in implementing a real data governance and rules governance but I don’t see them moving on this market today.

In synthesis, we can say that the offerings of historic Software Vendors are really immature. Indeed, we should never forget that the Sustainable IT Architecture is based on a chain of agility: processes rely on business rules, and these later rely on ref/master data. Therefore the natural integration path is as follows: MDM first, then integration with the CEP/BRMS, and at last integration with the BPM.

Avoiding the blind alley means to deal with MDM and Data governance first.
Thanks to a good command of ref/master data management, it becomes relevant and sustainable to work on the integration with a BRMS, and then with a BPM.
By the way, this is what we promote at Sustainable IT Architecture and what we deliver at Orchestra Networks.

Pierre Bonnet
www.pierre-bonnet.com

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Yesterday, I attended the Progress Software’s event in Paris.

10/7/2010

3 Comments

As usual Progress Software is innovating by launching a new concept: the Responsive Process Management (RPM) which provides companies with a full “tower control” of their real-time processes. This is an integration of Complex Event Processing (CEP), rules management and Business Process Management (BPM). The CEP relies on the APAMA software and the BPM comes from the recent acquisition of SAVVION.

The RPM solution should help companies to face easier fast-growing digital economy generating more complexity and real-time information management such as Internet of Objects and Global Positioning System.

As I am sure you know, Progress Software is a member of the Sustainable IT Architecture. In my book “Sustainable IT Architecture”, they wrote a chapter about the semantic data integration. That’s great to understand that they are working on the integration of the left side of what we call, at Sustainable IT Architecture, the Agility Chain Management System (ACMS). In other words, they are working on the linking value between BPM and CEP/BRMS.

However, as we state in Sustainable IT Architecture: processes rely on business rules (and events)… but those rules (and events) must rely on shared data across the entire company with a high level of quality, reliability and traceability.

Unfortunately, the yesterday’s speeches of Rick Reidy (CEO) and Rob Levy (CPO) don’t leave room of data governance, which is a big missing link within the Agility Chain Management System. Therefore, even though the RPM solution is important, its growth depends on the ability to master and govern shared data first. Obviously, this is the field of Master Data Management (MDM) and its data governance features.

In synthesis, I wanted to state that the linking value between MDM and RPM should bring a killer IS/IT foundation allowing a real, reliable and responsive infrastructure open to all IS stakeholders. On the opposite, deploying a RPM solution at a large scale of a company without mastering and governing shared data first could generate failures, and even being a blind alley.

Hope this post will be useful
Pierre Bonnet

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Financial meltdown and shifting to Data Content Management

Software AG, Progress Software and others... all in a blind alley

Yesterday, I attended the Progress Software’s event in Paris.

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