Companies of all sizes incorporate new technologies to manage data as a corporate asset

As companies process astounding volumes of data, the challenge becomes managing the value and risk related to that data. “Data is now viewed as a corporate asset, which means there is both revenue and risk attached to it,” states Giacomo Lorenzin, managing director of HiT Software, Inc., a BackOffice Associates, LLC Company. “It has moved out of the depths of IT and into the business users’ responsibility, particularly when it pertains to data quality and data governance.” IBM Information Management Resource Guide talked to Lorenzin and Frank C. Fillmore, Jr., president of The Fillmore Group, about how this change is affecting the infrastructure level of categorizing, accessing and storing data. They offer insight on what is impacting IT efforts to make data accessible, often in real time, to serve critical metrics and business objectives.

IBM Information Management Resource Guide: What major trends within development/engineering for IBM information management are you and your colleagues spotting?

Giacomo Lorenzin, HiT Software, Inc: We constantly talk with customers and prospects who have outgrown their data management systems – for instance, many of them are expanding their IBM systems, either with additional IBM databases or with other relational database systems. They contact us as they look for ways to knit their disparate database systems together without huge investments in 1) cost, 2) manpower and 3) time. They tell us they want data integration solutions that are easy to use, so that they can assign existing staff in IT to deploy and manage them. If they have to purchase additional products, they want pricing to be reasonably attributable to three to six months of gain in using the product, and they absolutely don’t want to spend a lot of time deploying, learning and tinkering with software that needs to be in place quickly. Ultimately, these businesses need solutions to data management now, not later.

Frank C. Fillmore, Jr., The Fillmore Group: The most significant trend we are seeing is increased integration of heterogeneous data. The tools to enable faster and easier federation and replication are being implemented by organizations of all sizes as the business value of strategic data is driving their adoption.

IBM Information Management Resource Guide: What do you see as the comparative advantages/disadvantages of commercial and open source information management solutions?

Lorenzin: In our world, we see the comparative advantages of commercial software to be software and development reliability and roadmap, software support, and one place to go for technical answers. We see open source software as a benefit to users, but not just in pricing; it has galvanized commercial software providers into re-evaluating best product features and usability. Commercial software must offer a higher value overall in order to compete with open source software.

IBM Information Management Resource Guide: What major challenges are your developers confronting these days?

Lorenzin: The biggest challenge our developers face is the pace of change – both from a technical perspective and from a business perspective. The number of new developments in data management – from types of data to levels of data (cloud-based, etc.) – is astounding. Keeping up with the pace of change is difficult, which is why we focus very clearly on changes in data integration – how we can provide the smartest and most useful features in data integration without bloating the software. We also face changes in business – mergers, acquisitions. Our objective is to develop and support data integration features for today and future requirements, while making our products versatile enough to support IT requirements that are based on a changing software environment.

Fillmore: Rapidly changing business requirements are forcing developers to incorporate new technologies at a faster pace than ever before, but instructor-led training continues to be a critical factor in short- and long-term project success.

IBM Information Management Resource Guide: What developments in business intelligence and info management are you most excited about?

Lorenzin: Clearly, there are two changes taking place that affect both business intelligence and information management. One is the focus on data governance. More businesses are beginning to see the correlation between data governance best practices and business success, based fundamentally on data management issues. Business intelligence provides snapshots into what has taken place, and forecasts what could take place – data governance methods and systems can help address the process and data issues uncovered by business intelligence and resolve them.

The second development we see is broad and universal adoption of business intelligence. While we’ve seen a lot of the larger enterprises we work with embrace business intelligence, it’s been a lot harder for the midsized and smaller businesses to do this – they simply don’t have the resources and budget for complex software suites. However, with the development of database support on Linux, acceptable open source solutions, data warehouse appliances, and other cost-effective options, these midsized businesses are able to take advantage of business intelligence in ways that help them grow and develop. We have seen quite a trend here, as we provide the data integration for these business as they migrate data from smaller systems to larger systems (such as DB2) or establish wider systems of networked data hubs to support the growing needs of additional offices or expanded business lines.

Fillmore: IBM’s acquisition of Netezza demonstrates their recognition that organizations of all sizes can benefit from the use of BI tools and data integration. A data warehouse providing actionable data is now within the reach of businesses of all sizes.

John Blyler can be reached at: jblyler@extensionmedia.com