Is This the Death of Traditional BI Systems Theres plenty of buzz surrounding inmemory BI a faster and less expensive form of business intelligence Can the iPhone Do BI Is it possible to deliver BI on the iPhone giving executives uptotheminute corporate data the minute they need it But Wheres the Security Even with a muchhyped ITGRC organizations are still at risk for costly security breaches Data Warehouses and Disaster Recovery David Kelly explains that forwardlooking organizations need to have disaster recovery plans in place for when systems are down or critical business assets are unavailable QAD Buys FullTilt for Master Data Management Premium Content from the Group QAD picked up FullTilt Solutions product information management PIM unit last week for its offering in the area of productrelated master data management MDM a key component in delivering Internetenabled ecommerce Five Tips to Prevent Your Next Data Leak Youre most valuable assets today arent locked in a safe but are very often stored right on your laptop Heres quick tips to protect your most valuable data Federated Event Systems The Event Web Eventdriven applications that are constructed as compositions of Web applications can offer considerable benefits to your enterprise The Year of CEP Complex event processing software is powering a new generation of applications that enables companies to make faster decisions and execute more effective actions The New Enterprise Data Center IBMs Rich Lechner presents a new data solution to provide innovation for your business and your customers Whats Happening in BI in I of II Some vendors check in with ebizQ at Gartners Business Intelligence Summit Integrating BI Within Your SOA Organizations looking to take advantage of integrating business intelligence within SOA are focusing on the following areas Achieving Real Results on the Road to Access Compliance Enterprises must breakout of the reactive mode with access compliance in order to deal with the new risks arising out of the new collaborative work environments Security Threats Straight Ahead The three major security challenges facing companies today Aberdeen EII Delivers Significant Business Benefits With enterprise information integration deployments companies can reduce integration project costs according to a new Aberdeen report Avoiding Master Data Management False Starts Heres how to make sure your Master Data Management project doesnt get stuck at the starting line The Case for Enterprise Data Services in SOA Properly executed data services can provide the link that unifies conventional data systems with the many strengths of SOA Kalidos Info Engine Rivals Systems Integrators The Groups Krishna Roy analyzes the latest release by Kalido Greenplum Bags Million in Funding The Groups Krisha Roy talks about Greenplums hot new data warehouse The Latest ProcessCentric BI Wares The Groups Krishna Roy discusses InforSenses aim at TIBCOSpotfire Identity Management No Longer Just the Bouncer at the Door Identity management is still the bouncer guarding the door but given the right tools todays bouncer has as much brain power as brawn Podcast Transcript BI Market Consolidation ebizQs Gian Trotta speaks to Lyndsay Wise about this past years consolidation in the Business Intelligence marketplace A Look Back at Cutting Complexity Out of the Agile Organization ebizQs Dave Kelly tells us what it takes for an organization to be agile and regulatorycompliant A Look Back at Where BI Has Fallen Short For most organizations current BI and analytics solutions have yet to deliver real benefits and adequate returns on investment How Do You Do QA for Perfomance Management Dave Kelly gives a real world example of how difficult it is to assess the performance of performance management tools Technology Trends for Data Management Predictions There are growing customer expectations for more powerful highly scalable architectures that run across these new topologies and deliver more business volume and velocity Forrester Its Time to Reinvent Your BI Strategy Business intelligence is no longer just about reporting Its about creating a competitive advantage PCI Compliance Thwarts Data Grinch These steps will get you closer to PCIDSS compliance The Inside Scoop on IBMCognos Beth GoldBernstein moderates an enlightening discussion with IBMs Mark Andrews OnStrategies Tony Baer and Aberdeen Groups Michael Dortch all about IBMs acquisition of Cognos Tony Baer on IBMCognos Barely a month after SAP announced it was buying Business Objects and roughly eight months after Oracle announced same with Hyperion IBM has closed the circle by announcing its intent to buy Cognos Keys to Data Governance Success Teamwork and an iterative approach go a long way in assuring agility and flexibility with data governance Signs You May be Violating Security Compliance Regulations These Signs Will Keep You Compliant and Help Head Off Future Security Issues Open Source Business Intelligence Megatrends ebizQs senior OSS analyst Dennis Byron identifies some interesting megatrends at work in the business intelligence marketplace Network Behavior Analysis A New Perspective on an Old Enemy Behavior analysis tools address the shortcomings of traditional security products Dennis Byrons Open Source Series Talking to Talend ebizQs Dennis Byron interviews Yves de Montcheuil of OSS data integrator Talend SOX Redux A Chance to Realize Savings and Improve Processes Organizations have the opportunity to reap the benefits of SarbanesOxley with far less pain A Degree View of the Business An effective portfolio management solution distills the vast amounts of data to which one has access so that people can get a complete picture when they need it CPM Market Consolidation Continues Exact Takes Longview Corporate performance management CPM acquisitions just keep on coming Streamlining Your Compliance Strategy Many organizations have started to look at the effectiveness of their compliance and auditing strategies with an eye to streamlining and automating processes and simply making audits less painful and costly BPM A Rules Approach Because business rules trigger critical decisions and an organizations mission is achieved through the use of business processes both need to be thoughtfully captured and preserved Book Excerpt Smart Enough Systems James Taylor and Neil Raden tell us how to deliver competitive advantage by automating hidden systems Where Do Event Processing and BAM Tools Pay Off In Roy Schultes final article in our special event processing series he says BAM tools and CEP engines are quite valuable and costeffective when used in the right situations Applying Event Processing Tools ebizQs David Kelly believes that the use of complex event processing will continue to grow over the next few years as organizations find evergreater needs to process the growing volume of realtime data entering the enterprise Top Ten Ways to Improve Your BI Initiative Dust off and maximize that business intelligence investment youve made Tony Baer on IBMs Acquisition of Softech Tony Baer says IBMs latest buy readily complements IBM Softwares Data Management groups Master Data Management and Information Server offerings as well as IBM Tivoli access control and security solutions Master Data Management Systems Build or Buy Before deciding to build or buy a company should answer specific questions about how it uses its data Guarding Your Corporate Data Assets Widespread use of collaborative technologies in the workplace expose companies to high level data security risks Managing the Risk of Collaboration Tools Companies must not forget to address the security and compliance vulnerabilities raised by the admittedly new and exciting collaborative and virtualized environments The Role of Event Processing in Modern Business Mani Chandy and Roy Schulte say the key to enabling nearrealtime operational BI is event processing Complex Event Processing and Your SOA David Linthicum suspects that as we progress with SOA as we become smarter on implementations architecture design testing and deployment that event processing will become better defined and layered within many SOAs Understanding EventDriven Architecture Gartners Roy Schulte and Cal Techs Mani Chandy share how event processing has emerged as one of the most important issues in IT today Shifting to a Culture of Analysis In this book excerpt from Actionable Web Analytics the authors say youre going to have to change many things from the ground up and build a culture of analysis in your company Dennis Byrons Open Source Series Talking to Apatar Open source BI startup Apatar seeks to deliver optimized application and integration functionality Big Changes in PCI Compliance Watch Out With Visa updating its PCI reporting matrix in late many retailers that formerly did very little or no business online and were as a result classified at the lowest two PCI compliance tiers suddenly became level necessitating change in compliance practices Why Good Product Data Matters Dave Kelly says having the right product data in the right form at the right time is more important than ever before Supply Chains and SOA Dave Kelly says incomplete or unstructured data can prevent effective communication and reduce the effectiveness of SOA strategies The Business Case for Intelligent Enterprise Content Management Is outsourcing no longer just a cost reduction tool but a powerful way to reengineer operations and accelerate strategic business transformation Key Decisions Require Vision An argument for nextgeneration business intelligence through utilization of interactive visual analysis Using EII to FastTrack Your Way to SOA As modernday technology navigators SOA architects are finding that EII or data federation provides an excellent charter for their voyage from planning and design to implementation Arming the Warfighter With Business Intelligence The defense intelligence community has had to change its information infrastructure from functionalgeopolitical expertise toward rapidly gathering analyzing and disseminating relevant knowledge from a vast quantity of classified and open source information AMR Research TIBCO HP Make Formative Moves in BI From AMRs John Hagarty Market dynamics continue to swirl in the broadbased business intelligence and performance management market Two large purveyors of ITfocused products and services have taken formative positions in the changing BIPM world Best Practices for SaaS How do you determine if Software as a Service is right for you Why Reliable Data is the Key to Your SOA ebizQs Dave Kelly says that SOA is really about effective communication which most importantly requires consistent reliable and accurate underlying data Building an SOA Treat Your Data as a Corporate Asset By implementing an information management strategy that focuses on data quality and data integration the benefits of SOA can be further realized The Changing Dynamics of Business Intelligence ebizQs Peter Schooff highlights a recent business intelligence podcast moderated by Beth GoldBernstein with vendors comments from HP LogiXML Hyperion Oracle Business Objects and SAS HighPerformance CEP Driving NextGeneration Business Intelligence Its time to get serious about the data deluge to transform data into intelligence SAP Makes Performance Management Move AMR Researchs John Hagerty talks about SAPs acquisition of OutlookSoft in this ebizQ gold club analysis Five Common Questions About Complex Event Processing As the demand for new realtime and highspeed data applications have increased these brittle solutions have reached their breaking points Deal Analysis Red Hat JBoss and MetaMatrix Tony Baer gives us the backstory behind Red Hats JBoss and their spate of announcements this week Data Mismanagement Invites Security Breaches Todays headlines with their disturbing accounts of identity theft and security breaches underscore the dire consequences of electronic communications and electronic data sharing Enabling the EventDriven Enterprise Mike Lough of Covelight explains the role of events to enable the realtime intelligent enterprise The Forgotten Master of Master Data Management Siperians Anurag Wadehra argues that business has to be the master of master data management Business Intelligence Goes Deep By combining business intelligence with process or workflow design tools you can create and implement smarter business processes BI in BPM Business Knowledge Management RFGs Michael Dortch says analytics and intelligence BI are increasingly coalescing and integrating with the capture discovery mapping and optimization of business activities performance and processes Data Storage Serious Business for SMBs Small businesses should proactively develop a data storage plan in addition to selecting storage platforms to protect company data and provide options for accessing data at any time Bruce Richardson on OracleHyperion AMRs premiere analyst on the consolidation that has finally come to the business intelligenceperformance management market BI Squeeze Oracle Buys Hyperion Tony Baer asks why IBM didnt buy Hyperion first Evolution Beats Revolution The deployment of executive dashboards Why IP Address Management is Critical for Corporate Compliance Regulatory compliance is now a businesscritical requirement that extends to the management of corporate networks Hyperion Snaps Up Decisioneering Adds Risk Management to BI Arsenal Decisioneering is the latest vendor to be acquired by the performance management and BI behemoth The Benefits of Logical Security A case for unified enterprise security management Keeping the Fox Out of the Hen House Eliminating insider threats as an essential security measure Master Data Management for the Skeptic Arguments for even the most skeptical critic to learn the business value of customercentric MDM What You Need When You Need It Exploring processenabled content rich vertical applications Beyond Process Automation BPM enables organizations to enforce operations consistency and also helps adhere to the everexpanding body of compliance regulations and laws RealTime Web Channel Intelligence Companies know that securing their data protecting their customers and building trust while growing the business is the best recipe for success Managing IT Risk ebizQs Dave Kelly says there are a range of both internal and external risks to the IT organization all of which can have direct and indirect impacts on a business Bond James Bond Risk Management Consultant Unlike s special gadgets and cool tools department most corporate IT groups have a limited budget for security and risk management Rising Above Commoditization Customer service is the last remaining differentiator and the key to longterm business process success Building Intelligent Business Processes into SOA Most business processes today are not intelligent Yet as leading organizations move to serviceoriented architectures they must build intelligence into processes in order to drive competitive advantage Identity Management EndtoEnd Part IV of IV The final article in Neil Macehiters identity management series AMR Researchs Business IntelligencePerformance Management Maturity Model AMR Research talked with dozens of companies about how BIPM implementations have progressed within their organizations Identity Management EndtoEnd Part III of IV Navigating the identity management standards jungle Identity Management EndtoEnd Part II of IV Neil Macehiter says organizations will have to bring together a well understood set of identity management capabilities if they are to respond effectively to current business trends Newly Private Serena Buys Pacific Edge The deal unites two companies with a shared vision of improving overall IT governance Serena through application change and lifecycle management Pacific Edge through IT project and portfolio management Identity Management EndtoEnd Part I of IV Understanding the set of processes and supporting technologies that manage the electronic definition storage and lifecycles of digital identities Reducing the Risk of Data Loss The need to define a solid data management and protection strategy is obvious but the adage about the devil is in the details clearly applies Wagging the Long Tail of RulesBased BPM How a new class of BPM software is mastering oneformany and manyforone Ensuring Business Continuity Part II What happens when everything you do is critical Ensuring Business Continuity Part I Small almost unnoticed computer viruses hackers or even a simple inadvertent configuration change in a database or server setting can trigger an unexpected application or IT system failure SOA Meets Business Rules How business rules can improve application integration and SOA implementation Opportunities in Basel II Technology More valuable than just compliance Better reference data management can help optimize risk and improve capital efficiency The Missing Discovery Piece of Business Process Management Capturing and analyzing real business processes is considered the critical step in any business process initiative SOA Governance and Rogue Services Avoiding the blind spots that will mess up your governance processes Content Management Systems Build or Buy Is it better to model the business around the software or the software around the business The Joy of SOX Why SarbanesOxley and SOA may be the best thing that ever happened to you Is Rational Waking Up Analysis from OnStrategies Tony Baer Enterprise Compliance Management RFG believes a central IT risk compliance program is imperative to manage new and evolving regulations The Elephant at the Enterprise Risk Management Party For the past few years its been a little lonely for the Enterprise Risk Management ERM proponents of the world but suddenly we seem to have lots of company at the party Using Security to Enable Growth Security has transformed from IT nuisance to business critical Perfect Compliance Is it Possible Perfection may be elusive but AMR says companies should use complianceas an opportunity to improve the processes of their business The Security Conundrum Its easy to be frozen by fear from security concerns but these fears must be balanced and tempered with a wide range of business considerations Managing and Measuring Security in the Enterprise IT executives should proactively develop and foster the best practicesrequired to monitor and manage enterprise security effectively Protecting Corporate Data Ejectable disk backup keeps business systems accessible to employees partners and customers with the appropriate security controls Business Assurance and the Changing Role of IT Technology is an enabler for more effectively managing the business but it doesnt solve problems unless it is tied directly to business and governance objectives SOX Compliance for SMBs Is it the IT equivalent of an apocalypse Speeding Toward Business Visibility The current state of the BAM market Business Assurance and the Changing Role of IT Technology is an enabler for more effectively managing the business but it doesnt solve problems unless it is tied directly to business and governance objectives Automating the Data Center Organizations require business policies and servicelevel agreements to drive dynamic and automatic optimization of IT infrastructure Business Activity Monitoring and Business Intelligence Powering eventdriven realtime business analytics How Innovation Can Save You from Overdosing on SarbanesOxley Building preventive controls and rules directly into financial applications Identity Management Becomes Essential As an IT function the Group says identity management is gaining inrelevance Using Business Intelligence to Optimize SOX Compliance RFG says enterprises are turning to BI solutions to facilitate compliance with regulations such as the SarbanesOxley Act SOX Compliance Partnering AMR Researchs take on the hot SarbanesOxley compliance market Viva La BAM Is it really possible to monitor business processes and make corrections in real time Reducing Risk and Increasing Productivity through Best Practices Accomplishing more with less Compliance Software Sector Heats Up Compliance comes in many flavors and software products that addressspecific business requirements within the compliance arena are as varied as well Manage Risk Dont Suppress It Securities firms tend to be at the front of the adoption curve for new risk management ideas and technologies SarbanesOxley A Business Blessing in Disguise Compliance is a great business yardstick to employ in uncovering and improving upon your Enterprise Resource Planning Dealing With Small Vendors in the Elastic Enterprise RFG says IT executives seeking to use the most innovative technologies have little choice but to turn to smaller technology vendors The Path to Integrated Network Security Part II of II Part II in a series about how integrated cooperative security technologies can leverage information and enforcement capabilities Bringing Order to the Business Activity Monitoring Space The market for BAM tools to aid in enterprise management has exploded into a chaotic marketplace The Path to Integrated Network Security Part I of II Integrated cooperative security technologies that can leverage information and enforcement capabilities are on the forefront of innovation in the enterprise security marketplace Is Data Somebody Elses Problem Successful business intelligence implementations can be a real drag Can Compliance Create ROI Understanding the difference between a tactical compliance solution and a strategic business process solution may contribute significantly to a companys longterm success Can BPM Save Us From a Compliance Nightmare Dave Kelly takes on the challenge of todays broad and complex compliance requirements Removing Bottlenecks From Your Database A new class of tools measures waittime for hundreds of specific delay points inside the database and quantifies exactly what response time boost you can achieve by resolving the bottleneck By looking inside the database and watching the waittime created by specific transactions you can make major performance gains without adding new hardware capacity SarbanesOxley Setting a Better Organization in Motion By embracing rather than merely complying with Sarbox organizations of all sizes will reap rewards that extend far beyond meeting the conditions required by the law says Sean Chou of Fieldglass Developing Industry Standards for Compliance Brian Sennett says businesses now have an opportunity to make improvements that go beyond mere compliance to increase the efficiency and predictability of operations Taking the Offensive on Identity Management With a spate of security breaches topping the headlines this month identity theft is also topping the minds of CIOs as criminals hack into corporate networks to steal and use personal information that invades individuals privacy and costs companies and individuals billions of dollars each year Jeff Currie the senior strategist directing IBM Tivolis identity management solutions group discusses how to prevent intrusions before they occur Invoking Enterprise Software Quality Standards Changes to software applications always carry business risks Risks such as unplanned downtime poor performance customer dissatisfaction lost revenue and more Therefore the pressure is on IT organizations as never before to support business process change this means delivering missioncritical software applications quickly while at the same time ensuring its reliability To deliver software quickly Software Quality Optimization SQO must be the centerpiece of software development and deployment How Does Poor Customer Data Management Affect the Customer Dave Kelly says customer data should be the central focus of your organization because after all you need customers to make money In most cases you also need to track and know about those customers to make more money But a surprising number of companies simply dont have customer data management policies or practices in place Keeping an Eye on Your Data Part II Data is one of your firms most valuable assets as it contains critical customer information while safeguarding the intellectual capital of the company says Howard Goldberg of Merrill Lynch In part two of this twopart article Goldberg provides several more excellent descriptions of analytical tools that can be used to protect your companys data and provides practical examples as well as sample reports for the benefit of the dataconscious ebizQ reader Software IP IndemnificationDo You Need a Plan ebizQ analyst Dave Kelly must have been a Boy Scout because his motto is to always be prepared especially when in comes to reducing risks associated with the intellectual property on the software your company is using Keeping an Eye on Your Data Data is one of your firms most valuable assets as it contains critical customer information while safeguarding the intellectual capital of the company says Howard Goldberg of Merrill Lynch In part one of this twopart article he explains that this data must be monitored controlled and protected for the organization to thrive and grow Achieving Semantic Interoperability Chris Harding of The Open Group says that today there is no argument that interoperability is a critical element for optimizing business performance and maintaining competitive advantage Your Software Intellectual Property Rights How and when should organizations worry about intellectual property rights and their software More specifically when should companies worry about if ever the risk of legal action against them based on claims of IP infringement ebizQ analyst Dave Kelly shares his view Speeding Up Business Benefits with SOA In todays highly dynamic marketplace organizations are looking for a fast return on new and existing investments ServiceOriented Architecture SOA is a framework that enables businesses to speed the delivery of IT projects costeffectively and easily SOA is an ideal framework to leverage functionality in old and new systems allowing the organization to respond faster to new opportunities Webinar Recap Best Practices for Designing a Flexible ServiceOriented Architecture In a recent Webinar on the principles of developing flexible serviceoriented architectures Bob Knauss a business integration solution specialist at IBM recommended building as much visibility and transparency as possible into all systems that house components so everyone will immediately know whats going on and get it all into a business context Know Your Business Impact Analyzer Before You Buy It Business activity monitoring tools are now predicting how your business will be affected by the performance of your IT Instead of simply alerting you when certain events happen in your enterprise IT layers they go a step further and predict how those events will impact your highlevel business processes This goes well beyond the basic dashboard model for the current generation of BAM tools Its a direction that tries to anticipate what you the consumer of BAM will ask for next Survey Define and Refine Business Performance Management Business Performance Management is being recognized as a way to align and optimize sales marketing customer service IT compliance finance and HR departments across an enterprise Taking our latest survey will help you to define specific benefits or refine your current implementation of this promising new method to meet business challenges Creating an Integration Competency Center and Keeping It Running The increasing complexity and number of integration projects can no longer be dealth with on a projectbyproject basis IT departments need to set up specialist units to cope with the growing number and complexity of application integration projects Gartners Paolo Malinvorno shares a gradual fourstage plan for the disciplined design deployment daytoday operations of an integration competency center The Rewards and Pitfalls Of Identity Management If its so great why doesnt everybody implement it Building Software for SarbanesOxley What kind of value can IT companies add in this new world of compliance development In this third in a special ebizQ series with our association partner the Integration Consortium author Rob Smith provides five suggestions for what you should include and what you need to think about when building tools for compliance Theres No I in SOX Team Is the SarbanesOxley Act a rigged game in which you play against the regulators and will your failure in the game result in very personal repercussions In this second in a special ebizQ series with our association partner the Integration Consortium Rob Smith chair of the associations Industry SolutionsSOX committee answers this questions and many others focusing on the importance of IT involvement in SOX compliance Seven Things You Need to Know About SOX IT Controls Groups that have been performing the internal compliance work in organizations adhering to the Sarbanes Oxley Act of have quickly realized that failures in the underlying processes within organizations provide the biggest risks for corporate catastrophe In this first of a special ebizQ series with our association partner the Integration Consortium Rob Smith chair of the associations Industry SolutionsSOX committee addresses seven of the most important things you need to know about IT Controls and SOX The Multiple Dimensions of Business Process Modeling and Standardization While substantial progress has been made in business process standardization the industry requires more that a single compacted standard says Antoine Lonjon of Mega International This feature presents the current status of business process standardization and the need to embrace the multiple dimensions of business process approaches Is Business Agility an Oxymoron Those who are equipped with an agile business rulesdriven enterprise will have greater ability to focus on strategic business decisions rather than be constricted by regulatory compliance headaches The Elastic Enterprise in Action Michael Dortch of the Robert Frances Group explains that the value of business application profiles BAPs and related repositories of information about IT and network infrastructures and business resources can be clearly and relatively quickly demonstrated at most enterprises However paths toward effective creation and management of BAPs and similar repositories can be far less clear Fortunately he argues IT executives and their teams can aid the enterprise by identifying incumbent resources that can help with BAP creation maintenance and use and helping to bring those resources to bear on these critical challenges Semantic Integration The Next Quantum Leap Toward Business Agility Semantic integration requires knowledge of the meaning of data within the systems including integrity rules and the relationships across systems ebizQs own vice president for strategic services Beth GoldBernstein says business agility will be greatly enhanced when the semantic meaning of data is managed and reused Companies that view integration only as a task on a tactical project will not be able to leverage the discovery and coding of semantic meanings across systems she says In contrast companies that blaze the trail of semantic integration will reap the rewards of increasing business agility Three Steps to Successful Identity Management Tight security begins with knowing whos accessing your system and leveraging that knowledge throughout your overall IT infrastructure Here IBMs Jeff Curie spells out how to go about rolling out an integrated identity management system for your company The Evolution of the Business Integration Architect As enterprises shift their focus beyond mere application integration to getting processes to work and play well together they need specialists who can see the big picture to assure they get things right says IBMs Douglas W Allen What makes a good business integration architect and why are they so important Allen knows BAM And CEP A Marriage Of Necessity Or Why BAM Must Use CEP As companies try Business Activity Monitoring and like it theyre going to begin conceiving new ways to use it And those new uses will by their very nature involve what IT guru Stanford professor emeritus and ebizQ columnist David Luckham has dubbed complex event processing How so Luckham peers into his crystal ball for the next twelve months and sees enterprise needs producing not only an engagement between BAM and CEP but nuptials EventDriven Business Processes Coming To A Company Near You The trend toward enterprises that are driven more and more by realtime data spawned by events is unmistakable according to ebizQ columnist David A Kelly who says the impact will reach all the way from the corporate boardroom to the cell phone or PDA in your pocket As Kelly puts it Over time being able to easily and efficiently generate receive and consume realtime data within your company and from business partners or customers is going to be a critical component of almost all IT and business plans The Growing Imperative For Business Process Monitoring and Management Business process monitoring and management are becoming prerequisites for business competitiveness Companies who ignore this trend may be doing so at their own peril stresses ebizQs Beth GoldBernstein No wonder then that she sees them as evolving into enterprise essentials The good news is that there are a large number of solutions on the market The bad news is that the shakeout has not yet occurred and there is also a great deal of confusion All the more reason to read on Does Your Company Know What It Knows Having complete reliable realtime information from and on all areas of the enterprise and its partners adding up to the big picture is critical for businesses But theyre still not there according to ebizQ columnist Dr Chris Harding of The Open Group He says the obstacles are formidable but being tackled in the hope of reaching information Nirvana what The Open Group dubs Boundaryless Information Flow Factors To Consider Before Buying A Data Integration Solution As data integration has gone from relatively primitive to a critical need of organizations the factors influencing the success of such efforts have also evolved in number and complexity Here Sterling Commerces Terry Noreault highlights key points to ponder as you mull the solution your company needs Choosing A Document Management Solution For A Compliant Environment Before your organization can comply with the myriad of new and approaching laws and government regulations it needs to select a document management system that enables rather than hinders compliance And Laserfiches Jeffrey Green is at the ready to help you separate the compliancesupporting software wheat from the chaff SOA Meets Compliance Compliance Oriented Architectures Compliance requirements are increasingly driving business agendas to the point of dominating many information technology budgets Leveraging IT to enhance business processes with transactional transparency is a necessary response to corporate governance needs Building the realtime enterprise is fast becoming the preferred method for reducing fraud and in more and more cases a mandated one In this report research and advisory services firm RedMonk delves into the implications for enterprises of the current compliance landscape as it relates to the hot SOA trend Testing While Aligning Business And IT Its something that sometimes gets given short shrift amid all the talk about such alignment But ebizQ columnist David A Kelly says it shouldnt be and he notes that something called riskbased testing is perhaps the most efficient way of checking how things will an do work at the intersections of business and IT Modernizing EDI EDI is a true survivor evolving with changing IT times to continue to meet changing enterprise needs says EXTOL Internationals Stephen Rosen He explains that the latest trends involve realtime data synching empowering endusers and EDI as part of complete enterprise views Realizing A RealTime Enterprise With Business Performance Management As businesses strive for better awareness of themselves and changing market conditions along with the ability to quickly respond to changes they should look to Business Performance Management advises the IBM Software Groups John Medicke He says it offers the bonus of getting IT and business in better alignment BAM Providers As Online Banking Fraud Preventers What a difference a little IT Insight stemming from advanced BAM could make for online banking providing a way to detect illegal online activities even as they happen or soon thereafter according to IT guru Stanford professor and ebizQ columnist David Luckham He says the technology is evolving toward that point and could get there with a push from bankers in just one example of what IT awareness by enterprises could mean Aligning Business And ITTheres No Other Way The need for such alignment isnt in dispute anymore says ebizQs David A Kelly but some key facets of getting there are tougher to come by than just buying more technology For instance he points out the whole nature of the relationship between business managers and the IT organization has to change Information Quality Your Decisions Are Only As Good As Your Information And that applies to businesses IT and in everyday life observes The Open Groups Dr Chris Harding an ebizQ columnist He notes that high quality data is essential but first agreement is needed on exactly what constitutes it and how to measure it And Dr Harding has a notion of how to go about achieving such a meeting of the minds Compliance Challenges Put Integration Heat On Bank CIOs Basel II and SarbanesOxley are just two of the stressors prompting them to seek increasingly agile and costeffective integration platforms How are they coping and how might their approaches apply to other sectors PolarLake CEO Ronan Bradley and Nigel Thomas of Lynton Research fill us in EDI BB Workhorse Keeps Getting Better And proving very adaptable and reliable at that as XML works its way into the mix according to Magic Softwares Lee Sutton in a recent ebizQ webinar summarized here Sutton says EDI remains the chosen BB path of a huge number of enterprises even as its vendors ready themselves for new challenges BPEL Helping SOAs Help Enterprises Theres no question that service oriented architectures can be significant enterprise aids by making organizations much more flexible fostering reuse etc But SOAs themselves need some assistance when business processes are being orchestrated and Web services are being composed And that boost is coming in the form of BPEL as Oracles John Deeb described in a recent ebizQ webinar outlined here Agile SOA Framework For Process Automation And Integration Enterprises with such an architecture would realize benefits that only begin with much greater agility and lower maintenance costs points out longtime IT consultant Alexandre Samarine And he has just such a design in mind RFID Moving Past Compliance To Real Benefits Enterprises must put forth more than minimal effort when it comes to RFID compliance In fact moving the focus beyond compliance to operational efficiency is key to realizing true enterprise value observes Tom Ryan of Aberdeen Group in this iResearch Abstracti Compliance represents a only small percentage of the total benefits for manufacturers Ryan says The Role Of EII In SOA Enterprise Information Integration is unique unto itself but helps organizations leverage other types of integration technology according to ebizQs own Beth GoldBernstein Here she explains how offering insight on EIIs history and growing role in the integration space particularly as a catalyst for companies seeking maximum agility and reuse from SOAs The Beginnings of IT Insight Business Activity Monitoring IT blindness can result in missed business opportunities on a large scale according to the terms creator David Luckham a Stanford professor IT guru and ebizQ columnist But Luckham notes that technology leading to IT Insight is starting to emerge solutions that could enable enterprises to seize those opportunities And he calls BAM the tip of the iceberg of that emergence Avoiding Common EAI Implementation Missteps If an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure how valuable would a laundry list of potential pitfalls in EAI rollouts be to you LogicCurves Jose Herrera figures plenty and here he runs them down to give you an advance headsup SOAs Help Companies Put Pedals To The Metal Fast agile companies often have fat bottomlines And in a recent ebizQ webinar summarized here Oracles Ashish Mohindroo explained how SOAs can help companies including yours get there especially when you steer toward BPM BAM BB and more for good measure XML Marks The Real Time Enterprise Spot XML is truly omnipresent in the integration landscape helping organizations become and thrive as real time enterprises as well as in the BB and compliance arenas just to name a few And in a recent ebizQ webinar recapped here Magic Softwares Lee Sutton traced XMLs rise to business helper and showed how you can make the best use of it BPM For Everyone Its already moving out of the pureplay arena and into some packaged ERP solutions And ebizQs David A Kelly says its likely to keep evolving as more and more organizations realize how much BPM empowers business users to create change and even monitor processes Grand Visions For eCommerce Require Solving IT Blindness IT visionary and new ebizQ columnist David Luckham observes that problems created by companies being in the dark about the impact on the business of events in their IT infrastructure may only get worse as new technologies such as RFID begin to bombard those infrastructures with levels of data never seen before But explains Luckham if we could relate events to highlevel business processes that would give us IT insight with enormous potential impact on all of eCommerce Dual Architectural Approaches To Agility Even as SOAs finally begin to come into their own bringing with them muchheralded additional enterprise agility another type of architecture promises to complement them in that regard said integration expert Roy Schulte of Gartner during a recent ebizQ webinar summarized here Automating The CustomerCentric Enterprise The most successful companies notes Online Insight CTO Dr Bradley S Fordham integrate product development marketing and sales efforts around one key variable customer preferences And Fordham points out here because those preferences are precisely that variable they need to be tracked in realtime and enterprises need an integrated view of them BAM It While Its Hot Becoming a true realtime enterprise has proven elusive and may not even be a necessity for many companies according to Tony Baer of research and consulting firm onStrategies But Baer says one vendor finally seems to have hit on an approach offering ireali realtime to enterprises that opt to seek it RFID A Call To Action Companies slow to warm to RFID would be wise to get a plan in place right away and start down that road advises AberdeenGroup in this iPerspectivei report Those that adopt a waitandsee attitude to try to avoid the risks inherent in such a new technology cautions Aberdeen risk being left at the starting gate and having to play catchup to keep up with demands from giants such as WalMart Will Your Next Appointment Be A CPO As businesses become more processcentric and managing those processes becomes more critical the need is arising for a new Clevel executive asserts Staffwares Chris Phillips The Chief Process Officer Here he argues that creating such a role makes compelling business sense New Approaches To Valuing Applications A persistent problem for enterprises is knowing whether applications and processes are performing up to expectations and not just in terms of whether projected ROI is being obtained But ebizQ columnist David A Kelly says solutions are surfacing to help organizations make such assessments and he points to one vendor in particular with a unique solution The StrategyExecution Machine The Future Of Competition This machine sometimes called the SEx Machine for short offers a way to keep your company a step or more ahead of its competitors at all times through timebased competition as BPM expert and ebizQ columnist Peter Fingar explained in a recent ebizQ webinar summarized here Tracking Business Transactions Across the Enterprise Its important because it helps companies to gain visibility into their business processes at the IT level and gives them a better idea of whats going on inside their business And ebizQ columnist David A Kelly says one vendor in particular may be ahead of the curve in this problem domain Avoiding Disasters Waiting To Happen All too often asserts IT visionary and new ebizQ columnist David Luckham managers are in the dark about the impact on the business of events in the IT infrastructure Using last summers big Northeast blackout as an example Luckham dubs this phenomenon IT Blindness and points out that imanagingi in realtime is a big problem presented by the emergence of the realtime enterprise He stresses that its a problem that must be solved to head off business and other disasters and give managers a better handle on their businesses in general The Future Of BPM Its quite rosy to hear Rod Perry of venture capital firm i tell it Perry makes the case that compliance is just the latest example of a business need pushing adoption of BPM systems He contends that BPMs place in the businessIT mix in general will stand it in good stead and says BPMs compatibility with legacy software will also help BPMs standing in the enterprise Connecting The Big Business Picture To The Details IT Infrastructure ebizQ columnist David A Kelly says doing that is critical to staying in business Here he explores why BPM is an excellent way to bridge the two levels but adds that its not the only way In any event Kelly stresses that companies have to have a sharp realtime view of their activities to be in position to respond to changes in business conditions Simply Smart BPM Gets Smarter Rulesbased BPM helps make enterprises more agile so they can adapt to change more readily That ruleofthumb was described in detail in a recent ebizQ webinar summarized here in which Pegasytems strutted its newest BPM stuff Assimilating BPM Col Sanders Secret Recipe Companies cant and shouldnt stir BPM into their IT stew willynilly say BPM gurus and ebizQ columnists Howard Smith and Peter Fingar Here they offer a methodical way to mix BPM into the enterprise menu and explain why it will be delicious for bottomlines BPI Carving Niche in Insurance Industry Proponents tout Business Process Integration as an efficient way to automate business processes especially those requiring interaction among numerous systems and organizations while leveraging legacy technology Metaserver President and CEO Richard Schultz is among those solidly in BPIs camp Understanding Transactions At Different Levels Having clear visibility into your business means knowing whats going on at the foot business level but thats made up an unlimited number of transactions and events at the much more granular business and intraapplication level Here ebizQ columnist David A Kelly sorts it all out for us The LegoSwiss Army Knife Approach to SOAs Mix in some BPM Web services orchestration BAM and composite apps and you have yourself the makings of an agile responsive infrastructure according to ebizQs Beth GoldBernstein and Magic Softwares Glen Johnson in an ebizQ webinar outlined here Choosing the Right Integration Solution Navigating the maze of integration technologies can be challenging and confusing To help put you on course to the solution you need ebizQ has put together a Buyers Guide featuring a map to steer you to the right types of solutions and the vendors offering them Here ebizQs Beth GoldBernstein focuses her compass on the Guide and map and shows how it can keep you from making expensive mistakes SOX Fits As Part Of Larger Compliance Efforts For all the buzz around SarbanesOxley a recent Aberdeen Group survey found business managers more concerned about the bigger compliance picture And Aberdeen has specific recommendations about making SOX a component of overall enterprise cost compliance initiatives Open Source Could Come On Strong For EAI Open source technology may soon make big inroads in the EAI space says EAI expert Ankur Laroia He points to ESBs which conform to open standards and enjoy a price advantage over traditional EAI software There are now even open source adapters which he asserts give open source another leg up Business Process Visibility Different Approaches Knowing whats happening in your business processes in real time is importantand ebizQ columnist David A Kelly notes there are different ways to keep tabs BPM vendors offer one perspective and you can get views from the XML and Web services side as well Integrated Compliance Solutions Step In Right Direction The rapidly proliferating laws and regulations that enterprises have to comply with is ironically spawning benefits for those same enterprises points out the Robert Frances Group In this report RFG explains how to leverage the current compliance landscape to your companys advantage Integration Architectures Foundations For Growth To invest or not to invest In an integration architecture that is Thats Inoti even a question assert ebizQs Beth GoldBernstein and Candles Peter Rhys Jenkins in a recent ebizQ webinar The resounding answer Yes They also offer a look at ebizQs Business Integration Roadmap EAI Toasters The more things change the more they seem to stay the same especially in the IT realm So says David Linthicum Grand Central Communications CTO and ebizQ columnist Take for instance the latest incarnation of IT appliance the socalled integration appliance Might it be right for your company Building Resiliency Into Your Enterprise Integration System Thats another way for ebizQ columnist Andre Yee to say fault tolerance and high availability assurance Andre says its an oftenoverlooked aspect of integration design and he serves up pointers on building architectures that have that trait After all what good is any IT system if its down Business Process Automation For Financial Services Firms The impact of paperladen business processes is no paper tiger for financial services firms Indeed it can be a real bear of a problem But Mandy Chepeka of PureEdge Solutions says XMLbased eforms are providing such firms with the ticket to automated processes and their many effiencies The SOABPMS Bridge To Agility Making companies faster on their feet and more responsive to market conditions is more easily said than done But it IcanI be done by creating a businessdriven IT infrastructure via a strategically crafted combo of an SOA with a BPMS says Cognizant Technologys Pravin Gokhe Global Trade Compliance Complicating the Supply Chain Complying with the multiplying rules and regulations involved in global trade can be perplexing on its best days And RFGs Sara Braunstein cautions that theres no quickfix None of the solutions from ERP supply chain management and niche vendors do it all in the realm of trade logistics Making JEE and NET Work And Play Well Together In SOAs Like it or not its almost inevitable that youre going to have to at some point according to ebizQ columnist Andre Yee He sets out here to explore the three most common methods to get the job done including their pros and cons Web Services Hope In The Hype Its there said Gartners Cameron Haight in a recent ebizQ webinar summarized here You just have to be cautious in your approach to Web services in general and Web services management in particular to realize the business benefits Web services promise to provide And Haight served up specifics BB Why You Need It And How To Achieve It Still need persuading that BB is the way to go Want some handy suggestions on implementing it Then a recent ebizQ webinar summarized here was the place to be Oracles Ashish Mohindroo offered a compelling case for BB then outlined practical steps for instituting it BPM Point and Click Application Integration Integration efforts that tie infrastructures in Gordian Knots of custom code can be a distant memory if companies turn more to BPM says AptSofts David Cameron He says BPM provides a lowcost integration layer as well as workflow and monitoring functionality and helps align business and IT Understanding BPELWS and Application Integration Part In this third and final part of his examination of BPELWS integration expert David S Linthicum explores more aspects of how it works and reiterates its potential as a standard for process integration He also clearly points to the one thing about BPELWS that no one can be sure of yet Simply Smart BPM Takes Businesses by Storm What is smart BPM and how is it helping insurance companies weather a tight economic climate Whats more what might it do for your company even if its not in the insurance sector A recent ebizQ webinar took a look and we peek at that webinar here Who Will Make BPM a Success BPM is all about putting the ability to shape and manage business processes in the hands of business users right Then why is one major vendor betting on idevelopersi getting the BPM market to take off ebizQ columnist David A Kelly delves into this one BPELWS Integration Aid Part Wellknown integration guru and ebizQ columnist David S Linthicum says BPELWS can help enterprises harness the promise of Web services process integration and serviceoriented architectures Here is Part of his look at how your company can join in and reap the benefits Creating An Integration Strategy While its tempting to do integration tactically its better overall to go the strategic route Compelling reasons are provided in a book being written about integration best practices by ebizQs Beth GoldBernstein and integration expert Bill Ruh Here GoldBernstein offers some initial insight Biz Process Integration Key Financial Services DealClincher The financial services industry is fiercely competitive and The AlignIT Groups Stephen Ross observes that technology in general and business process integration in particular have emerged as evermore pivotal differentiators as firms seek to win and retain customers Staying a Step Ahead of SWIFT Financial firms cant rest on their SWIFT implementationrelated laurels says Vitrias John Parker He notes changes to the standard are coming swiftly and says firms will have to be just as swift to stay up to speed Parker also pans pointtopoint implementations and lauds those based on BPM SarbanesOxley Compliance Calls for BPM And that explains AMR Researchs Eric Austvold isnt just for known regulations related to passive process documentation but for future active compliance as AMR calls it Austvold also suggests three ready sources of BPM software Get A Grip With Enterprise Nervous Systems Whats an Integration Competency Center whats it got to do with an enterprise nervous system how can it help your organizations integration efforts and what benefits would result Gartners Roy Schulte gave valuable insight on that and more in a recent ebizQ webinar summarized here CPOs and Black Belts Process Improvement Missing Links AMR Researchs Eric Austvold would likely answer Yes In a recent ebizQ webinar outlined here Austvold explained why he thinks Chief Process Officers and black belts are among the emerging trends companies can get in on to extend their ERP systems and become processoriented and agile BPELWS Integration Helper The buzz around BPELWS has been picking up And noted integration expert and ebizQ columnist David S Linthicum says its with good reason properly applied BPELWS can help enterprises harness the real potential of Web services process integration and serviceoriented architectures Defining Business Integration Requirements You cant get the answer right if youre not clear on the question ebizQs Beth GoldBernstein and integration guru Bill Ruh are writing a book on integration best practices and early on they examine the prime movers for integration projects how to define business requirements and how to measure success Ten Critical Steps Toward a RealTime Enterprise The benefits of becoming a realtime enterprise are many and are becoming more and more apparent and widely acknowledged In a recent ebizQ webinar our own Beth GoldBernstein and CommerceQuest President and COO Lee White discussed a bunch of them Crossing The BusinessIT Chasm With Composite Applications Composite apps can go where pure EAI cant to help keep business users happy according to Commerce Ones Bashyam Anant In making the case for composite apps he also notes that they make sense from an ROI standpoint Integrated CRM Analytics An Emerging Compliance Tool In a new report highlighted here analysis firm the finds four vendor segments competing to dominate the CRM analytics market And the says the stakes could also be high for their customers who may need reliable integrated CRM analytics to comply with SarbanesOxley HIPAA and similar laws WebSphere s New Tools From BackEnd to EndUser Want the lowdown on optimizing WebSpheres endtoend performance You can get it from a recent ebizQ webinar in which IBMs Alan Dickman detailed many of the new tools in WAS Version and how to make the best use of them The New Integration Paradigm Making Business Processes Fly The old days of integration of pointtopoint hardwired difficulttochange spaghetticode are disappearing being replaced by a businesscentric wave of processoriented agile enterprises A recent ebizQ webinar gave an overview of the movement and its benefits for businesses BPM Way More Than Just Compliance Benefits Using BPM to stay in line with SarbanesOxley HIPAA and other statutes can not only keep you on the right side of the law it can give a significant boost to your bottom line Viewers of a recent ebizQ webinar got the lowdown The Business Imperative for Business Integration Starting with the premise that integration is critical to business success but noting integration failures our own Beth GoldBernstein and noted integration expert Bill Ruh are penning a tome on integration best practices Here GoldBernstein offers insight on the book and invites iyouri input Web Services What Curious Minds Want To Know The recent expoQ webinar Whats the True Value of Web Services was such a hot ticket presenters Ross Altman of EDS and Whit Andrews of Gartner got so many questions they couldnt get to many of them But get to them they do right here Patching Revenue Holes Is your revenue pipeline springing leaks If so your bottom line could be taking needless hits In this column ebizQ analyst David A Kelly explores the ways holes pop up in such pipelines and ways to plug them up and assure a smooth flow of profits to company coffers Going Overboard On SarbanesOxley The Robert Frances Group says vendor hype surrounding SarbanesOxley is almost deafening Yet an RFG survey finds IT execs hear more noise than see products that truly help with SarbanesOxley compliance Indeed RFG asserts that existing technologies can probably do most of the compliance trick provided an enterprise is truly elastic Building A Defensible Compliance Strategy The tide of new regulations that public companies have to comply with will continue to rise unabated along with the associated demands on IT as the Robert Frances Group sees it So RFG says companies must put in place processes to keep up with the new rules comply with them and in case of noncompliance minimize the damage And in this IT Agenda report RFG gives details on possible strategies for businesses to follow SarbanesOxley Transform as You Conform With BPMS Publicly traded companies are dishing out significant dollars to comply with the SarbanesOxley Acts strict reporting requirements But complying with the new law could reap benefits for companies far beyond the SarbanesOxley arena as this ebizQ webinar summary illustrates Integration Matures With Business Activity Monitoring Business activity monitoring and business process management are widely viewed as the next big steps in integration making it an even more valuable business tool Here analyst Dave Kelly takes a look at how realtime business activity monitoring can help companies their partners suppliers and even their customers The Critical Role of Strong Authentication in HIPAA As HIPAA deadlines continue to be phased in healthcare organizations must learn how to adapt their IT systems to the new regulations This white paper by Jam Kahn of Rainbow Technologies focuses on patient privacy and authentication requirements as well as the technologies available to assist in achieving HIPAA objectives HIPAA A Healthy Change for the Healthcare Industry The phasein of HIPAA requirements is beginning this month And despite the advance warning many healthcare provides arent prepared This paper from IT consulting firm Syntel looks at the benefits that HIPAA will convey upon the industry and provides an action plan for getting up to speed on the new requirements Critical Success Factors in a Business Process Integration Initiative Business process integration or BPI is the most strategic and thorough approach to application integration But it is also a major undertaking How should an organization go about structuring its BPI initiative William Ulrich of Tactical Strategy Group describes the key strategic and technical requirements for a successful project
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