Master Data Management vs Metadata – Two Sides Of The Same Coin

by Rob Karel.

I’m fortunate enough to be tracking two exciting, but vague and ill-defined markets that are becoming increasingly critical to large enterprises around the globe: master data management (MDM) and metadata management. Ask ten information management professionals what MDM and metadata means to them and you’ll likely receive 20 distinct answers.  MDM usually involves some business-focused statement about achieving a single trusted view of a customer, product, or some other critical data, while IT typically looks at metadata to reduce complexity, and increase productivity, reuse, and collaboration, by having a single version of truth about their company’s “data about data.” To me, it seems there should be more synergies and collaboration between these currently siloed and disparate enterprise initiatives.

I believe in a close alignment for a number of reasons:

• MDM and metadata both require data governance and collaboration between the business, which will own the definitions of this data, and IT, which will deliver it. 
• There’s no MDM without metadata.  The definitions, business rules, quality metrics, data relationships, policies, and stewardship roles that enable a master data capability are all captured and maintained through the effective use of metadata.  In other words, metadata is the only way that master data can truly be trusted.
• The desire for master data is one of the key drivers that make metadata “business relevant” and not just another IT-driven initiative.

In the short term, my recommendation for information management professionals who are about to scope an MDM or metadata strategy is to consider scoping both together.  I expect software vendors and system integrators specializing in data management to increasingly offer methodologies, best practices, and tools to encourage this alignment of priorities, as well.

“Users” Became “People” At Lotusphere 2007

by Matt Brown.

Perhaps the most interesting part of Lotusphere this year was the renewed focus on people, community, and social software. The theme ran through every aspect of the conference – from the new Lotus Connections product announcement to noticeable improvements in software usability across all Lotus and WebSphere products, and even to the forward-thinking forays into new social computing environments like Second Life. It was hard not to notice the excitement and interest of participants as they asked hard questions about how well social software concepts and technologies will translate into an enterprise setting – will people tag, bookmark, chat, converse, and share via these tools? And why would a company use these tools as opposed to using free services on the Web?  While we’re starting to see business users adopting these tools, clear answers to these questions will take time to materialize.

Of course, IBM is not alone in putting their emphasis on human beings – Microsoft’s latest wave of products also have many of these themes coursing through their marketing material.  This is good for the buyers of both software vendors’ products. For years the software industry as a whole has been characterized by products that are engineered before they’re designed – and the race to get new features on the market led to engineering groups throwing partially engineered products over the wall to red-meat-eating sales professionals who then crammed them down the throats of buyers. The feature war is over. I much prefer to see the software vendors competing to make people more effective and have impact in their roles – by making their software easier to approach, easier to use, and easier to integrate, and by helping people to make richer connections to each other.

Don’t Just Manage Content — Put It To Work!

by Erica Driver.

Something really big is happening. Many companies and even software vendors aren’t aware of it because they’re so busy trying to get their arms around content—put it in repositories, integrate the repositories, manage corporate records, get people to stop emailing documents around—that they’re way too busy to see the ground shifting underneath their feet.  This groundswell is about putting content to work—and that means, quite simply, doing something with the content that’s being managed so it creates business advantage.

For years, enterprises, vendors, integrators, consultants and others (including me) have strived mightily to get content under control. It’s still a massive problem: there’s so much content — written documents, presentations, email, web pages, spreadsheets, graphics, videos, podcasts . . . the list goes on — and it’s in every filing cabinet, drawer, hard disk and memory stick. Even today, after years of investing in document imaging, document management, collaboration, and web content management systems, most content is not locked down, versioned and searchable using metadata or tags.  But it’s time to move on — “simply” (that’s a laugh) managing content isn’t enough.

There are countless ways to put content to work—enterprise search, RSS feeds, content analytics, content centric apps, mashups, information management, business process management, and contextual content, to name a few—and it’s time to get started. Probably the easiest way to get started with putting content to work is by taking a hard look at marrying business process management with documents, or by looking at the emerging market for content solutions—we call them content-centric apps—that automate specific content-intensive processes like deal management, proposal management, and contracts.

Wiki Trust Issues Are Highlighted By Wikipedia Objections To Microsoft Tactics

by Erica Driver.

This week, the mainstream press reported that Microsoft made a Wikipedia “no-no”: Microsoft offered to pay an independent contributor — Rick Jelliffe — standards expert and the CTO at an Australian tech company — to investigate the accuracy of, and change, if necessary, technical articles about Open XML and Open Document Format (ODF) on Wikipedia. ODF is an OASIS and ISO standard and Open XML is Microsoft’s alternative , currently an ECMA standard and potential ISO standard. Kyle McNabb and I were talking about this incident. Here are our thoughts:

·         You know a public Web site is important when a company as powerful as Microsoft tries to pay someone to change its content.

·         You can’t trust everything you read on Wikipedia. While this trust incident reached the public eye, it’s definitely not the first. I’m sure there are other people out there who have an interest in a posting and feel stuck because when they change it, others who may not agree with them change it right back again. And I am sure this is not the first time one party tried to pay off another to modify a posting.

·         Can you blame Microsoft? They’re somewhat stuck between a rock and a hard place. Anti-Microsoft camps would have a field day upon finding out Microsoft made changes to the content in question. Bringing in an independent, objective third party was a good move, but offering to pay them for their time brings up questions of objectivity.

The lesson learned? Information and knowledge managers who put wiki tools in place for enterprise use must take care to address trust concerns . Let internal wiki readers know who's contributing content and making changes — don’t follow Wikipedia’s anonymity model.

IBM Shifts eLearning Focus To Informal Learning

by Claire Schooley.

Lotusphere was inspiring. The investment and effort that IBM Lotus has made in social computing with its announcement of Lotus Connections is visionary. Although learning is not a part of it in a formal way yet, it’s coming. I spent a number of hours in the Research Lab with researchers from all over the world looking at their ideas; some were more developed than others. These thinkers have taken the step forward in looking at learning as something that is informal, contextual, controlled by the employees, and available when employees need it so they can be successful at a task. 2007 will bring more developments and I’m betting that informal learning will be an important part of Lotusphere 2008. Of course, all this is going to require a culture change within organizations. Companies that encourage people to explore new technology for use as a business tool will be the first adopters. Those, for example, that still don’t allow IM most likely will watch from the sidelines. A knowledge management or collaboration evangelist or champion is important to get social computing started within an organization.