The industry reflects, looks ahead

By Staff, ZDNet Asia
Friday, March 14, 2008 06:39 PM
Frank Koo, managing director, Oracle Singapore
Frank Koo,
Oracle Singapore
The key challenge for organizations will be to distill meaningful, reusable knowledge by bridging the traditional structured world of corporate data, with the unstructured world of Enterprise 2.0.

Q. Name three hot technologies to watch in 2008.
Koo: The three major technology solutions to watch in 2008 to help organizations to keep pace are:

•  Governance, risk and compliance management. 2007 saw the reputations of many organizations--from global manufacturers, and banks to even governments--come under scrutiny as they faced explosive product quality issues, serious data breaches, unethical business practices, and the list goes on.
As a result, 2008 will see a renewed focus on risk management and compliance--whether it is a business executive looking for better ways to manage risk, a finance manager tasked with regulatory compliance, an IT director managing multiple Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) project requests, or a supply chain manager tasked with enforcing compliance across the company’s ecosystem.

•  Easier integration. 2008 will also see innovations in application and data integration. In what is an imperfect and heterogeneous world, one of the biggest challenges is to mesh a variety of applications from different vendors, and to connect disparate pieces of structured and unstructured data to gain greater business agility. At the data integration layer, we will see innovations in database technology to connect disparate pieces of pertinent information so that companies can make timely decisions. At the application integration layer, we will see a shift away from the ad-hoc, point-to-point integration connectors offered by numerous vendors, to an architectural approach to application integration.

•  Enterprise 2.0 and data flexibility-–In 2008, we will start to see Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis, social networks and blogs pervade the workplace. The key challenge for organizations will be to distill meaningful, reusable knowledge by bridging the traditional structured world of corporate data, with the unstructured world of Enterprise 2.0. It's about how to leverage existing tools and services in new ways; it's about how to reflect contextual relationships between apparently unrelated services to produce a holistic view of things--to create systems that people want to use, rather than have to use.

The biggest mistake I see CIOs make is...
... Taking a piecemeal and tactical approach to building the information architecture. This myopic thinking results in integration challenges as well as problems arising from working with multiple vendors. There is inflexibility in the IT infrastructure to cope with the rapid changes and demands from businesses.

CIOs need to consider a future-proof, end-to-end information architecture that is based on open standards--built around a single technology stack spanning applications, middleware and database--with strong industry processes. This will ensure that the information architecture is flexible and scalable to keep up with the unrelenting pace of business today. For example, with a service-oriented architecture (SOA), organizations can develop modular business services that are easily integrated and reused.

As organizations search for their competitive edge and try all sorts of new business models, a one-size-fits all approach will no longer suffice. Organizations need to leverage on applications fine-tuned for specific industries and situations, which are easily integrated into the infrastructure. This means that CIOs and their teams can spend minimal time and resources on integration and maintenance chores, but provide more support on revenue-generating activities and innovation for their companies.

The biggest challenge facing IT departments is...
... Data management. Data, structured and unstructured, is growing at an exponential rate. Beyond maps, images, documents and e-mail, IT departments have to deal with new data types such as 3D spatial models representing transportation models or construction simulations. What's more, the brave new world of Web 2.0 has brought about free-form collaboration tools like wikis, social networks and blogs that are infiltrating the enterprise.

There is an urgent need for organizations to bridge the traditional structured world of corporate data and the unstructured world of Enterprise 2.0. By consolidating the silos of structured and unstructured data across the enterprise into a centralized database, there will be improved business process integration, simplified management, and increased accessibility and availability of pertinent information to make timely decisions.


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