MDM Publishing
October 10, 2007
Recently, I gave a presentation at the Gartner MDM Summit on how enterprise information management (EIM) enables master data management (MDM) solutions. A common question asked by the attendees at the conference was, “What are the capabilities of MDM systems to publish data?” This question was asked in a general sense, of course, because the capability of any given MDM system to publish data will vary from solution to solution.
Let’s look at this question and define the term “publish.” The purpose of an MDM system is to create, maintain, distribute, and otherwise manage master data. “Distribute” is the key word here. How do you get the information out of an MDM system and distribute it to the applications that need it?
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Business Objects to Acquire FUZZY!
September 10, 2007
In case you missed the press release, Business Objects has announced the intent to acquire FUZZY! Informatik. FUZZY!, which I will abbreviate to Fazi, is the leading data quality software vendor in Germany. Amongst other capabilities, Fazi has address assignment engines for 31 different European regions – from Portugal in the west to the Baltic States and Russia in the east. More importantly, these engines use address data from each country to process customer records in double-byte (Unicode) format and in the native language and computer encoding of that region.
Unstructured to Structured Data
August 21, 2007
Some of you may have heard that Business Objects acquired Inxight, a text analytics software company. In short, text analytics — in this case — is the ability to scan through unstructured text, perhaps a whole book, and parse the inherent facts, entities, and actions into a series of structured records. Yes, before the experts start E-mailing me, there is little true unstructured text. A newspaper article, for example, has substantial structure (title, paragraphs, sentences, context, diction, etc.) that the human mind uses to interpret what is said. However, the data is not parsed out into nice discrete database fields that we can search on, analyze, and otherwise manipulate.
The possibilities are endless when you integrate a robust text analyzer with an ETL application, routing in such a way that the output of the analyzer is routed into a sophisticated data classifier, categorizer, and standardizer.
SaaS, How it Fits
August 16, 2007
As part of my job, I conduct market research. One of the many needs for that research is portfolio management, which answers the question: How does the entire mix of products and services a company offers fit together in a cohesive strategy to serve the market? SaaS (software as a service), and the opportunity to offer it, is part of today’s enterprise software portfolio. The evolving needs of data administrators and IT directors pose new challenges for software; and I think now is a good time to explore -- especially from the EIM perspective -- how SaaS is a complimentary solution to deploying software on-site at a customer’s facility.
Yes, I’m Back Blogging
August 6, 2007
For those of you who subscribe to my site via RSS, or other feeds, you have probably noticed that I am now blogging again, after a 10 month hiatus. Why start again you ask? Simply put, I missed it. I like to write and share new ideas in the field of enterprise information management (EIM); and blog posts are a good place to prototype or test article ideas, white paper content, etc. So if you are looking for new thoughts this is the place to come. It’s why we have established the indexing system (along the right side bar). You can actually use the blog as a repository for retrievable EIM content.