On December 8th, Liaison is sponsoring David Loshin from Knowledge Integrity. He will be speaking on "Transitioning Enterprise Data Architecture Using Actionable Metadata." I’ll be joining in on the webcast to discuss Liaison’s perspective on this topic as well. To lay the foundation for this topic, I thought I would recount some of my own experiences as they relate to this specific problem.
Customers move from one solution provider to another for many different reasons. These reasons include: cost, product/solution capabilities, lack-of-support for current solution set, etc. Working with many customers over the years, in helping them move business processes and solutions over from one product or solution to ours, I have found a common theme or pattern. What I find is that a customer’s first instinct is to try and replicate the solution they are moving identically to how it was architected in the first place – regardless of whether it was architected well, or if the new solution space can even support the original methodology. Many times this is how vendor selection is arrived at when selecting a new product or service.
I always feel that when a customer changes their solution-set, they have the opportunity to re-architect a solution. This is the time and the opportunity to do it right, but what does this mean? It can mean several things. We must learn from the mistakes of the past – what did we do wrong in the original implementation? We need to prepare for the future – how can we make this solution last? Treating a solution or product as an isolated entity is the first mistake many companies make. The word organization stems closely from the word “organism” or “living being”. This is how entities must treat all products and services that comprise the business. All things are interconnected like a complex living organism. Approaching infrastructure in this way reduces the “silo” effect of creating many disconnected systems, or systems that do not connect very well. The concept of “actionable metadata” and the topics to be discussed play a valuable and integral role in establishing a framework to build a healthy “organism”.
The idea of actionable metadata may not save you from the mistakes of the past, but it can definitely prepare you and protect you in the future. If you are interested in hearing more, I highly recommend registering for this webinar at:
http://tdwi.org/Webcasts/2011/12/Transitioning-Enterprise-Data-Architecture-Using-Actionable-Metadata.aspx