Information management and enterprise architecture

PRACTICAL ENTERPRISE INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
Rajesh Nadipalli (rajesh.nadipalli@gmail.com)
Mar 2012, rev 3

rajesh.nadipalli@gmail.com

About this Presentation

Most organizations today lack a bridge between the data architect who
is proud of the physical data model (ER Diagram) and the Enterprise
architect who is trying to transform the business based on priorities set
by the CIO at a higher level via architectural blue prints.

In this presentation I talk about models and approaches to build this
bridge and enable organization to have an architecture driven
information management

In today’s atmosphere there is a mix of Cloud based services (externally
hosted), NOSQL databases and custom relational databases, a successful
EIM will enable an organization to be really “agile” to meet their
business needs


Agenda

• EIM - Basics
• EIM - Approach
• EIM - Tools
• References


EIM - BASICS


EIM - Basics

EIM - BASICS
Enterprise Information Management (EIM) is an initiative to mange data
in all forms and treat them as a strategic asset.

A good EIM program will result in an integrated, accurate, timely data
across your enterprise.

A good EIM program will have policies, frameworks, technologies &
process to address:
• Data models
• Data lineage
• Data quality
• Data profiling
• Stewardship


EIM – What’s the need?

EIM - BASICS
View of the Enterprise based on 2 roles:

Business Architect perspective:
• What is the system of record for customers? Should that be the Sales,
Customer Support, Accounts Receivable system OR a combination?
• If a Master Data system is defined, how is this data being propagated?
• How fresh is my Data Mart that get data from a Cloud hosted service?

IT technology Architecture perspective:
• What’s the best way to integrate with cloud services which can be
private or public
• How do I model NOSQL databases with little formal structure
• How to integrate Social Feeds (Tweeter, Facebook)
• How to combine this with Legacy and traditional relational databases

EIM will address these questions by process, tools and frameworks

EIM – what’s the value?

EIM - BASICS
To put a direct $ figure on the value of EIM is a challenge.

Couple of Examples on what if you don’t have an EIM:
• If your Cloud hosted CRM calls a customer “Bill Adams” but your
Accounts system calls him “William Adams Junior” and now your
marketing system has no clue that they are the same customer and
sends him 2 separate communications. What is the cost of annoying
your customer or sending him multiple mails?

• Your company recently went through an acquisition and you want your
sales team to include current products and the newly acquired company
product as a bundle offer. Who can identify all the systems that need
to be updated? How long and whom do you need to pull in? Are you
confident that your dashboards will reflect these changes by next
quarterly results?


EIM –APPROACH


EIM – Suggested Key Steps

EIM - APPROACH
Business & Strategy Alignment (EA)

Application & Data Architecture (EA)

Data Modeling

Master Data Management

Lifecycle Mgmt, Governance

Data Profiling & Quality

http://www.togaf.org/

EIM – Enterprise Architecture Alignment

EIM - APPROACH
TOGAF is popular EA framework and recommends ADM which is
an Iterative Process

Requirements at center and …
•Phase A: Vision, Stmt of work
• Phase B,C,D: Baseline, Gap analysis, target state
•Phase E: Initial implementation plan
•Phase F: Detail transition plan, cost benefits, risk
•Phase G: Arch Oversight; issue arch contracts
•Phase H: Procedures for managing change.

For each requirement, TOGAF looks at
Business, Application, Data and Technology (hardware)
layers to ensure a solution architecture change is holistic.

Phase B is Business Architecture, Phase C is Information
System Architecture, which is further broken down into
Application and Data Architectures.


EIM – EA Alignment (contd)

EIM - APPROACH
Business Architecture (Phase B)
• What are the new goals for the organization
• What business requirements need to address by these goals
• What business functions, process and services will be changed/added

Application & Data Architecture (Phase C)
• What Applications (IT Systems) serve the business functions (as identified
in Phase B); which ones will need revisions
• What application functions will be impacted
• What enterprise data entitles will need to created/updated/stored to
meet these changes
• What data transformations, interfaces (like ETL, web services) need to be
built/changed


EIM – EA Alignment - Example

EIM - APPROACH
Business Architecture (Phase B)
• Goal: Improve conversion rate leveraging social network of our customers
• Process Changes:
• Customer registration (currently only has email), add facebook, twitter, linkedin, account
information
• Ad campaign team should use social networks for new leads and advertising

Application & Data Architecture (Phase C)
• Application Architecture:
• Customer Registration change for new fields
• Integration changes to Marketing systems to push this new fields.
• Automated ad’s to customer’s social network. (might suggest this to Biz Architect)
• Data Architecture:
• Additional Columns / Tables to capture new content
• Consider a flexible model to accommodate other social media sites

This example shows, how the different architects can work together and be effective

EIM – EA Data Model – 3 layers

EIM - APPROACH
While the EA effort will talk about data architecture changes at a high level, the
data architects should build the next level of details in the following 3 layers:

Conceptual Model
• Business Friendly
• Only High level entities and taxonomy
• Connected to Business capabilities

Logical Data Model
• Key entities , attributes
• Relationships to other entities, cardinality
• Ownership by IT Systems (System of Records)
• Interfaces and dependent IT systems

Physical Data Model
• Entity Relationship Diagram
• Physical characteristics (string, number, date, length)
• Constraints (Primary, Foreign, Referential)
• Data Store (Database name)

EIM – Data Model – Example

EIM - APPROACH
Conceptual Layer:
Customers
•Really High Level
• Customer Information

Customer Sales Rep

Customer Basic Info
• Customer ID Logical Data Model
• Sales Rep ID
• Last Contact Date •Multiple Logical entities
• Name
• ID • 1:N, N:1 relationships
• Address
• Customer Since Date Customer Locations • Interfaces identified
• Customer ID
• Ownership defined
• Site ID
• State

CUSTOMER_SALES_REP

ID NUMBER (PK)
CUST_ID NUMBER (FK)
SALES_REP_ID NUMBER (FK)
CUSTOMER_DIM
LAST_CONTACT_DATE DATE Physical Data Model
UPDATE_DATE DATE
ID
NAME
NUMBER (PK)
VARCHAR2(100)
UPDATE_BY VARCHAR2(50) •Detail field types
ADDRESS VARCHAR2(500) • Typical Entity Relationship from DB
START_DATE DATE CUSTOMER_LOCATIONS
UPDATE_DATE DATE
UPDATE_BY VARCHAR2(50) ID NUMBER (PK)
CUST_ID NUMBER (FK)
SITE_ID NUMBER
STATE CHAR(3)
UPDATE_DATE DATE rajesh.nadipalli@gmail.com
UPDATE_BY VARCHAR2(50)

EIM – Data Model – how to scale

EIM - APPROACH
To have a successfully Data Model, enable scaling on both
directions:
• Vertically: all layers of stack (Conceptual, Logical & Physical)
• Horizontally: segmented by line of business (Finance, HR, Marketing..)
• This will help you assign data stewards by domain and layer

For example say, lets’ take “Customer” and suppose your Company-A
just made a recent acquisition of Company-B which has it’s own set of
customers
• Conceptual Layer: Customer will be one entity for enterprise
• Logically Layer: You can have 2 entities “Customer-A” and “Customer-B”, both
linked to the same conceptual entity but having different data due to the separate
Line of business.
• The architecture target state should recommend a consolidation of the two
Customer Entities if there is an overlap.


EIM – Master Data Management (MDM)

EIM - APPROACH
MDM is for list (like Customer, Product)

Key aspects for a successful MDM:

• Agree on the System of Records
• Define Data Stewards
• Adoption of MDM data (integrate/sync with dependent systems)
• Ability to identify and merge duplicates
• Ability to fix (case sensitivity, renames)
• Add versioning (type 2 / type 3)
• Hierarchies
• Reporting


EIM – Lifecycle Management, Governance

EIM - APPROACH
Lifecycle Management
• Defines the business processes linked to “Data Entity” at all phases -
Creation, Consumption and Archival
• What is the impact to data integrity; for example in a SOA based
environment System A would rely on System B for details of a related
entity; if System B archives the entity, the business users might have an
impact.

Governance
• Identify data stewards
• Establish guidelines for process, documentation, permissions &
communications.
• Data stewards should work with EA to ensure alignment


EIM – Data Profiling, Data Quality

EIM - APPROACH
Data Profiling
• A mature source should be profiled and this sample can then be used as a basis to
detect bad data before it gets reported in dashboards.
• Quality issues should be proactively be emailed and reviewed by appropriate
analyst who can fix the same.
• Data correction can also be automated to reduce the manual overhead.


EIM – TOOLS


Tools

EIM - TOOLS
I plan to add some screenshots of tools in later revisions of
this presentation


REFERENCES


References

REFERENCES
EIM & EA
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb266338.aspx
• http://www.togaf.org/
• http://www.kimballgroup.com/
• http://www.sap.com/solutions/sapbusinessobjects/large/eim/index.epx
• http://www.troux.com/products/troux_information/

MDM
•http://www.talend.com/download_form.php?cont=mdm&src=HomePage
•http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/master-data-management/index.html

Data Profiling
• http://www.informatica.com/us/data-profiling/
• http://www.sas.com/data-quality/index.html


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