With the risk of sounding repetitive and stating the obvious...let me begin...by suggesting that this may NOT be a closed and sealed topic...And my recent interactions with business and IT leaders of some leading global organizations confirmed this point.
Right...we are living in an age where social networks play a big role in the rise and fall of political leaders, ideologies and institutions...we all vouch by the significance of this phenomenon in our daily life...we all have our virtual identity as our alter ego. But when posed with the question of Enterprise Social networking, Shakespearian style soliloquies and musings continue to live on in the minds of Senior Management..."To B(log) or Not to B(log)...that is the question..."
Is this too powerful to be contained within the enterprise? (Is 'contained' an old economy expression...That is yet another discussion). Does it appear to be too destructive (to the corporate fabric) and distractive (to the corporate citizens)? Is Enterprise 2.0 trying to wish away Social Networking - its very own bedrock?
May be it is time to take a relook into the whole phenomenon....
There was a time when Enterprise Social networking was all about throwing in a set of the so called "Enterprise 2.0 applications". We all have gone past those ages of infancy. We have started to appreciate the deeper facets and cultural hues of Social Networking and that is all to do with the way people communicate.
In this new paradigm of collaboration, an organization's "information fire hoses", transforms into "Channels of Expression". The seemingly casual, huddle formation but very relevant and useful exchange of information that normally happen at the water fountains now becomes the norm. Likeminded people flock together and start to express freely and Interesting topics attract user attention and people pour their hearts out. Discussions change course through the conversations...really interactive and participative. In this construct 'Organization' became incidental and the organizational hierarchy breakdown. Wear your creative hat for a second and try to visualize a day in this 2.0 Enterprise - You meet the CEO at the water fountain almost every day and even the newest employee get an opportunity to walk the corporate corridors. Right...in this world 'Personalities', 'Topics' and 'Need for Self Expression' take the center stage.
So let me go back to the earlier question...Does this appear to be too destructive (to the corporate fabric) and distractive (to the corporate citizens)? With all the perceived benefits around the "breaking down of Information asymmetries", "Employee Engagement" and "Knowledge Sharing" it IS in a way triggering off '"too many changes too soon". And this IS the cause of concerns for the wannabe Enterprise 2.0 CIOs. The organization needs to be primed to handle this cultural shift. The organization need to transition though a set of changes based on its state of affairs and priorities.
If we look at Social Networking or Enterprise 2.0 as a dynamic and synergic co-existence of 3 key entities - People, Purpose and Information (People, Intent and Content), on a framework that enables 'Self Organization' and 'Participation' the jigsaws suddenly falls in place.
This forces the CIO to ask the question, so what are we trying to achieve? What is my priority?
Thus a road map based on the organiational priorities would make this transition and transformation into a true Enterprise 2.0 organization more seamless and fruitful.
This transition does not happen overnight. The tranformation is more cultural and as we always say technology is an enabler. And with the right Enterprise Social networking strategy and roadmap, the organization seamlessly matures into a Smart enterprise
3 years and a ton of learning & insights...a good milestone to take a pause, reflect on our experience, relook at the vision and rationale behind our venture and...get ready for the next dash. Yes..."Search & Insight Driven Computing" one of our prized incubations within the Information Management space turned 3 this year.
Now for the curious and the new entrants into this space, let me explain what this "animal" is
We started this incubation almost 3 ½ years back and now this Service line has successfully moved out of its incubation phase with a bouquet of case studies, multiple account openings and very strong GTM relationship with the leading product vendors in this space
Now, you may ask what led us into this...A few trends that we saw in the Information Management space, almost 4 - 5 years back, caught our attention and those and, in a way, formed the key rationale for the formation of the Search Practice.
Let me try to recollect them for you...
Trend 1: Organizations had started to realize the value hidden in the unstructured information
It is a known fact that 85% of the information within the firewalls of an enterprise is in the unstructured form. It is more interesting to note that most of the IT investments over the last 4 decades and the entire information management industry had been focused on building solutions to address the structured information. The opportunity and possibility to open the vault of unstructured information and unlock the insights from that excited us and we were thrilled to envision the possibilities that would open up for an organization like ours.
Trend 2: The enterprise boundaries had started to blur
We saw the "post dot com" world slowly crystallizing around "consumers". Organizations were (and are) trying to be more "consumer-centric" or outward focused. The concepts of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 were emerging and with all these the information that is outside the firewall was becoming significant and there was a need to access and leverage that.
While these were going on there were some interesting development within the Enterprise as well
Trend 3: "Formation of Mini Internets within the Firewall"
Within the enterprise space, due to obvious reasons, we were witnessing the growing heterogeneity, replication and fragmentation of information. The enterprise information domain had started to behave like a "mini internets" within the firewall. For any information architect the challenge would be to see how the most relevant information can be provided to the business users comprehensively and at the right time.
And successful information management frameworks would be ones those are "aware of this chaotic situation and can address that"
Meanwhile on the Technology front a new kid had entered the block, changing the way we looked, accessed and managed information
Trend 4: Technology Trend: Search has transformed from a keyword lookup mechanism into a contextual information integration engine.
We see this as a journey that would involve
Based on our perspective the potential impact this approach would have on the Enterprise Information Management space is very similar to what RDBMS created 4 decades back.
It is quite heartening to see how valid these thoughts are...even now and to move on with our onward journey
"How can we help people make the right decisions - choose the right options in this constantly changing world?" Sounds like a noble dream... a philosophical question...A good case for a modern age Sidharta to leave the royal pleasures in search of the answer...Well, almost...Last week 500 technologists, business leaders, analysts and psychologists converged at the fringes of the Arizonian desert to reflect on the same question...sharing their experiences, observations, opportunities and insights
The event - Discover 2011 - the annual User Conference hosted by Endeca Technologies, Inc., a search and business intelligence (BI) company featured dozens of customer-led sessions, that deliberated on how the simplicity of Search combined with the power of BI can transform their organizations by enabling business users, partners and end users to make better decisions.
The sessions opened with a bang with Paul Sonderegger (Chief Strategist & Ex Principal Analyst at Forrester Research) who set the right context to the event...He painted a picture of
This was followed by and that too quite seamlessly by another insightful talk on "How we take decisions". Jonah Leher author of best seller "How we decide" took the audience into the realm of neuroscience to explain the complex events happening in our own 3 pound supercomputer - Brain - during our mundane day to day decisions, like picking up a box of cereal from the store shelf... How the cognitive centers and centers of emotions work together in guiding us to our choices...
Let me take a pause here...Shouldn't the "Information workbenches" mimic or facilitate this process? Every application that we build thus becomes an information exchange that will help users to experience predictability in their daily transactions.
On the same note, it was quite heartening to see a world that we visualized...a strategy that we charted out almost 4 years back, turn out into reality. This approach called for a fresh look at information management and attempted to perceive next gen information management as
An art of intelligently delivering the most "relevant" information to the user for that specific context
Interesting isn't it...Now the questions in front of us will be, "Will this impact the IT fabric of an organization?" or "Will this change that way we design and develop applications?" The short answer is "Yes"
When an organization decides to implement Data Quality strategy, there are several design patterns that can be considered. The data quality goals should be the key driving factor in choosing the design factor.
Continue reading "Design considerations for a Data Quality Framework" »
Some time back I was catching up with an old friend of mine who is a self proclaimed branding guru. As the conversation progressed, we started jokingly making fun of each other's profession and in no time things got heated up. Finally he said "you techies should stick to coding and let us worry about branding". Well, he may have said it in a fit of rage, but it made me wonder. Is there an impact of technology on the way branding is done, especially online branding? Do the brand gurus need to be aware of where technology is going and also the other way around.
Take the example of online branding. Initially online branding meant having a unique domain name and website. But slowly organizations realized the value of unique branding on their website as more and more business shifted online. User Experience Design became a major ingredient of all website development and everything from logos to images to colors to information architecture was revamped to establish a unique branding for the website. All was going well for the brand conscious organizations, when almost suddenly technology pulled the carpet out from below their feet. In came search and feeds.
Search meant that users don't anymore spend hours browsing your website. They spend more time searching for what they need, look at the snippet and visit your site only if they feel its relevant. Feeds meant that they may not even visit your website anymore. They might just use a feed reader or a video player (depending on the kind of feed) to consume your site content, without ever visiting your site. This change in information consumption pattern blurred the concept of brand for the user. The same page might have content from multiple sources, and the most prominent brand will be of the feed aggregator or search provider.
So does online branding need to adapt? Yes, of course. The fundamental shift is in what is being branded. It used to be entire web pages, but now it is every small unit of information which can be accessed in an alternate way like search or feed or video. But how do you brand such small pieces of information? Well here come some emerging standards to the rescue.
One such emerging standard is Microformats. It is already being used for business cards and calendars, and browsers have started providing support for it. A new microformat named 'hbrand' could be defined with maybe the logo, company website link, company information etc. which might be shown on the page itself alongside the content or as a tooltip on hover. HTML5 also provides support for similar concepts through Microdata specification which is evolving.
What is more, the consumer base for such specifications is also growing. Google has started supporting Rich Snippets where Microformat, Microdata and RDF tags are read and used to display useful information along with the search result snippet. Feed readers and video players could follow soon.
So organizations need not just worry about branding their websites. They will have to start ensuring that every piece of information they send out in the form of feeds or search results are also branded. But how do you ensure this? Maybe a branding gateway component which intercepts all content being sent out and tag it with the branding information defined as a Microformat or Microdata. Search engines, Feed Readers and video players will the start using this data to create a unique branding for the content wherever it is displayed.
So will technology revolutionize the way online branding is done? Maybe, as my friend said, maybe I should worry about coding and leave the branding to the likes of him.
Ritesh Radhakrishnan
“Abracadabra” as childhood this is related to something appearing in hand of magician by just uttering these words. Making something appear has always fascinated me since childhood be it magician in circus show or locating your lucky shirt when you need it most or now in professional world searching for content from huge data stored in digital format.
Yes I am referring to upcoming stream called “ediscovery”. This means process through which we can make things appear which are stored in computer or network for purpose of reproducing them as evidence in court of law. Law Instructed or Government backed ethical hacking also comes in preview of this domain
With new nature of frauds coming into our way and most of state governments working on laws to protect cyber crimes and ensure quality of output it becomes all the more important to focus on this stream.
Although “eDiscovery” has recently caught my attention and I am still thinking about this. To me it is more than technology. It deinately has some element of law, security and compliance all built into it. Though I am not a law expert but I can certainly pay attention to IT related issues where technology can be used
Few Scenarios which can boost this stream of work are:
1. With search coming into shape and latest technologies coming our way to perform advanced searches. It makes it possible to search digital content using advanced algorithms
2. Digital Data once written over network cannot be lost easily. Retention and Archiving Policies make sure that we can retrieve desired information back
As part of ediscovery all kind of data can be searched ranging from images, movies or text content. Emails and Chat Messages are another important source of information which can be required to search and reproduce.
This whole stream can be serviced with following services:
1. Data Analysis
2. Data Retrieval and Conversion
3. Scanning
4. Metatagging data for easy retrieval
5. Indexing and Processing of data
6. Exporting
7. Printing
8. Quality Control
9. Recognition of data
With lot of legality and complexity involved in this topic I intend to DISCOVER (and invent) more and write about it.
Any thoughts from your side?
Every one's been talking about "Enterprise" word, and BI is no exception. We all have been hearing and providing multiple roadmaps on Enterprise BI/Reporting, & agree that its not an easy nut to crack - multiple reasons attributed to it. Diversified business, products, customers, geographies organization operate globally, departmental goals and systems to support them never were built to hand shake. What this effectively boils down to is a huge data store which is there to sort our problems, but instead we got lost in trying to integrate, and make business/strategic sense out of this.
Continue reading "EIM – Mimicking our own "Human Nervous System"?" »
I recently came across a very nice video explaining about enterprise mashups (Watch Video). All of us in IT know those mission critical projects with tight schedules, last minute problem solving with moving goalposts and suffering from the dreaded scope creep. So the image of having the users doing their stuff on their own while I’m relaxing in an armchair with a nice glass of wine is quite appealing. But will Enterprise Mashups get me there?
Continue reading "Will Enterprise Mashups “mashup” the Enterprise?" »
There are times when a company wants to change the way they are working in order to bring in efficiencies at different levels. This change has become mandatory to them because their current processes or systems are not able to help them meet their strategic goals and therefore making a negative impact on their overall performance. In such cases the company management decides to change systems that they think are causing the bottleneck and embarks on a mission that will remove the bottlenecks or implement a new system that will help them perform certain functions better and faster. Such initiatives can help them meet their immediate goal or solve the problem they are facing. In the long term these bottlenecks will start surfacing again in different forms. Even well thought long term solutions need to be revamped and modified periodically but the cost of doing this will be much lesser because this will be done less frequently and changes can be controlled. Therefore, it is very critical for a company to know if the decision they are making about implementing a new project is right or not.
Continue reading "Discovery - How important is this phase" »
I'm excited to discuss the Infosys M-Fabr1k© solution , a DW Migration Factory, that anchors on principles of Automation, Acceleration and Accuracy. As of today, this solution
- Provides complete migration solution from any RDBMS to Netezza
- Provides a Factory based migration approach which is in line with the principle of DW Appliance
- Accelerates various stages of migration life cycle by 35% !
- Provides faster analysis techniques, Migration solution and robust testing solution & framework
- Reduces the migration timelines with high productivity gain and greater degree of automation
- Guarantees the ROI on future DW Platform
- Helps the customer to accrue incremental benefits earlier than traditional approach
Enterprise Information Management – it’s quite a mouthful, and sounds very intimidating and gargantuan in its scope, as in trying to boil the ocean…….
So wouldn’t it be nice to be able to digest it in smaller nuggets, and get your arms wrapped around specific concepts, that could be broken down further, which in turn can be translated & mapped into actionable projects. Then, I would know how my specific initiative fits into the overall landscape of EIM for my organization.
For me, the ABC’s of EIM can be most easily remembered as the 3 C’s –
Consolidate ………Information
Convey ………………Actionable insights
Conserve ………… the Information fabric
Posted by Rajiv Sabharwal, Chief Solutions Architect, HCLS
So here we are again... First of all let me thank those who provide me with very valuable feedback on my previous post. It was highly appreciated as it was my first attempt at blogging. It is difficult to teach an old dog, new tricks...
Now to business. As promised in my last post, today I will talk a bit about the ILM imperatives in the provider space. Providers being the entities and/or personnel that provide care giving services, such as hospitals, labs, physicians, nurses, hospices etc. Healthcare providers in US (for that matter pretty much everywhere) are a varied and highly disjointed lot... no surprises there. There are many disparate systems that contain patient's medical information and obviously they do not talk to each other. Infact till very recently there wasn't even a common standard for data exchange. For that matter even now, though there is an attempt at a few standards, none of them are universally accepted/adopted.
Continue reading "ILM in Healthcare and LifeScience - Part 2" »
By Rajiv Sabharwal, Chief Solutions Architect, Healthcare & Life Sciences
Every industry has its own unique perspective of a horizontal technology/platform, with its own nuances regarding the context and content of the outcome. Healthcare and Life Science is no different. If anything, information storage and delivery takes added significance in this highly regulated industry, simply because of protection provided to patient information thru multiple regulatory mandates.
Over the next month or so, I will make an attempt at discussing a few ILM (Information Lifecycle Management) imperatives in context of healthcare and lifesciences thru a series of blogs, specifically directed at individual implementation scenarios. I would sincerely appreciate feedback not only from horizontal perspective but also from industry and domain perspective.
Continue reading "Information Management - The Healthcare and Life Sciences perspective" »
Many architects still believe that BI/DW and SOA are divergent Architectural paradigms and SOA is not applicable to BI. Some of the key reasons are
1. BI requires detailed understanding of the data for adhoc analysis while SOA encapsulates data behind the service interface.
2. BI requires high volume data being handled in batch mode while SOA serves a specific transaction which is well defined and data volume is low.
As a small business matures to become an organization, the 'information' it houses, becomes of interest to numerous parties within and outside that organization. This information becomes one of the key factors for that business to sustain and measure growth and establish partnerships. This blog entry will provide an introduction to the IT practice of managing this information – Enterprise Information Management (EIM) and discuss how it can be used during different stages of the information lifecycle.
I will talk about the following six stages of the Information lifecycle:
Continue reading "Information, Information Everywhere, Not a drop to Think!" »
