Highly Competitive - software industry insights

Cloud Integration: One Platform, Diverse Users

 

Final article of a six-part series on the essential interwoven nature of Business and Modern Data Integration

 

When we're talking about diverse categories of users for data management software solutions such as data and application integration, it's essential to understand the perspective of each group of users and their needs and abilities, in order to develop the most suitable user interface and the right capabilities for each category.

The future of cloud integration platforms may belong to vendors that step up to truly understand diverse users and then deliver what they require to be successful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today cloud-based integration platforms are opening access to different categories of users including less-technical business users. Business users have begun to assume more hands-on use of integration capabilities to run pre-built integrations, profile datasets, perform data prep functions, and even create basic integrations through wizards and pre-configured components. This is a very important means to an equally important end: taking advantage of the availability of more data to help these users do their jobs better, to benefit the organization.

Vendors for cloud integration platforms are also beginning to recognize and support diverse technical users. There can be quite a bit of difference between a technically-adept line-of-business developer who lacks deep experience for creating integration processes, and a developer who is a data integration expert and likely tackling complex integration scenarios. Each category of developer requires the right user interface and capabilities to create, run and manage integrations, in order to accomplish work requirements and support business objectives.

I recently talked with a vendor that is focused on providing a single cloud integration platform for diverse user categories. The vendor is building out a framework of ten different categories of technical and business roles with a clear view to how the platform would be used by each category. This exploration of how different users make use of integration capabilities should help this vendor streamline and perfect what it takes for different users to work well not only on their own but with other user categories when needed. This requires the platform to guide each user category to the appropriate capabilities, including a role-responsive or adaptive UI.

Another cloud integration vendor is developing a vision for multiple categories of users with schematics for how they may continuously interact during several aspects of typical integration phases. For each category of user, the appropriate platform capabilities are pinpointed along the integration phase continuum. The vendor wants to expand the solution platform to shepherd and enable this symbiotic approach to business and IT working together for more effective integration processes.

When we're talking about different categories of users for data management functions, it's essential to understand the perspective of each group of users and their needs and abilities, in order to develop the most suitable user interface and the right capabilities for each category. In that sense, it takes an outside-in perspective, working from what different users need from data management functions like data integration, and how they are comfortable working. This is a very different approach for most integration vendors – the focus has long been solely on the technology (which obviously is still important). However usability from the user perspective has been a critical topic for software vendors for quite a while.

 

The Technologies Behind "Simple" User Interfaces

A cloud integration platform that is designed to support a variety of user access options clearly requires the development of sophisticated technologies that essentially make the complex seem simple to the user. Different categories of users often require variable versions of the same user interface that are streamlined for ease of use, and that provide access to role-appropriate capabilities.

As such, the integration solution can be distinctly shaped by the variety of user roles that are provided access to the platform.

Often the work done to enable less-technical users can also benefit UIs and capabilities for more technically-adept users, providing faster paths to creating integrations. More technical users can take advantage of pre-built integrations, shared services and components that require little or no coding, just as less technical users can. For those who need it, most cloud integration platforms include the ability to customize and extend pre-built integrations through coding and other methods.

Obviously to keep less technical users on the straight-and-narrow, monitoring and management by centralized IT teams behind the scenes are essential elements. Setting up the right balance of management and freedom for business users will take some hard work, but will pay off as certain integration activities can be handed off to business users. This is another area of business-IT collaboration that requires IT to enable business users to work with integration processes, not to prohibit them.

Cloud integration platforms provide other technologies to guide all categories of users to more quickly and confidently build, test and run integration processes. Such technologies include role-aware, interactive "tooltip" constructs that pop up in the UI in response to an action or choice. The influence of mobile apps and digital games can be seen in the better "tip systems".

UI-based guidance techniques include "crowd-sourced" recommendations that are derived from the analysis of all integrations in multi-tenant platforms. Analysis processes look at how similar integrations have handled certain steps or are constructed overall, elucidated by the context of what the user is trying to accomplish. Equally helpful, interactive assistance tools focus on quickly resolving errors by showing the most likely solutions in order of relevance.

The UI has become an essential element for usability in cloud integration platforms and obviously has inspired a great deal of innovation to benefit all users.

 

The User Experience of Data

In a sense, diverse business roles and different kinds of developers have both been "underserved" by integration solutions. All too often non-IT users are lumped into the single blob of "business users" which is pretty useless for understanding much about who those business users are or how they want to – or even should – use integration solutions. And developers are usually seen primarily as data integration experts, rather than acknowledging the diversity of developer categories that need to create integrations regardless of the extent of their knowledge about integrations.

Diversity of users for cloud integration solutions isn't going away. More roles in organizations want and need to work hands on with data management functions to help generate the datasets that they need for their jobs and their business objectives. So the vendors that step up and deliver what different users require will take cloud integration platforms into the future.

Just like any user experience challenge, the gateways to integration solutions - user interfaces – have to work well for each category of user. So vendors have to understand a lot more about the different kinds of users who want access to integration solutions and about the user experience they should have, to ensure the success of all users. For cloud integration platform vendors, providing outstanding user experiences – for diverse users – is an invaluable differentiator

 

Image source: http://synergy.kuniv.edu/

 

About the author: Julie is an independent consultant and industry analyst for B2B software solutions, providing services to vendors to improve strategies for customers and target markets, products and solutions, and future direction. Julie has expertise in several solution spaces including: data integration and data quality; analytics and BI; business process, workflow and collaboration; digital marketing, WCM and social media; and the pivotal importance of user and customer experiences. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Data Connectivity in the Web-Enabled World

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As the use of SaaS and cloud services has grown, the API (Application Programming Interface) has come to the forefront as an important technology component in this web-enabled world. APIs are points of entry or connectivity methods, for integrations between different services, systems or applications. Extensive documentation is made available to assist developers, to quickly and effectively work with an API.

Actually APIs have been around a long time, and have been used in data integration processes when other connectivity was unavailable. Both APIs and data integration have come a long way since then. Pre-built connectors for innumerable data sources and formats comprise 'table stakes' for today's data integration requirements. As such, developers and users can quickly set up API connectivity to simplify the sharing of data between: cloud services and mobile apps, data integration processes and data repositories – and enterprise applications residing anywhere.

 

The Web API Economy

A detrimental side effect of the fast growth of SaaS applications and cloud services has been the propagation of endless data silos in the cloud. Vendors for cloud applications provide APIs to enable users to access that data, which unfortunately results in the propagation of endless proprietary APIs. Mobile apps have added another front for the non-stop creation of APIs. While many APIs are available to third party developers as "open" or public APIs, underneath they are frequently proprietary to each vendor and not necessarily "open source".

Vendors for SaaS and cloud services have been able to find advantage in their APIs, both for their own purposes and to benefit their users, beyond accessing their data. APIs have become an economic factor that is opening the door to third-party innovation and developer communities. When vendors provide APIs, technology partners and other developers can create new applications (data mashups, for example) that extend the value of vendor services. Mobile apps in particular need such mashups to quickly and seamlessly pull in information that often comes from multiple sources.

Vendor companies are taking advantage of the APIs they have created to build their own digital sites, mobile apps and even internal business processes and applications. Slowly tools are appearing that enable business users (with good tech savvy) to work with APIs -- following the lead of emerging self-service options for business users in data integration and analytics. So the API Economy is evolving to help different roles get a lot more from web-enabled applications and services.

 

Web API Management

Numerous software vendors have found opportunities in providing API Management platforms or solutions. At the high level, these solutions support:

• Development, publishing and documentation phases
• Creation of integrations through pre-built connectors
• Various deployment and customer usage activities
• Overall management and monitoring of API events and services
• API life cycle management

The primary customers have been companies that create web APIs, but third-party users and partners also interact through API management platforms. These platforms make APIs available to third parties, through a regulated and secure interface.

 

API Management for All APIs

For all the buzz about the API Economy and extending services, ultimately a lot of the value of APIs is in connecting to, aggregating and integrating data for more innovative business use. What's exciting about the API Economy is that it's making it easier to use APIs, even for less tech-savvy business users. When offerings begin to include access for business users, it means that the tools are more streamlined for in-house developers and third party solution providers – translating into faster time to implementation and more time for innovation.

Somewhat ironically, the developers and third-party users of web APIs are now folding in connectivity to data sources and applications in the "traditional" enterprise tech world as new ways to leverage APIs. The current notion of what's called API Management will likely evolve beyond the initial focus on web APIs and APIs created and maintained by a particular company, to the broader enterprise world of systems.

 

Image source: cedefop

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for MSPs and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM's PivotPoint. Dedicated to providing valuable insight from industry thought leaders, PivotPoint offers expertise to help you develop, differentiate and scale your business.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting

 

 

 

Interoperating Services are the Heart of Cloud Data Integration

 

Most SaaS offerings started with a business user focus, providing applications that zero in on solving specific business problems. It's become an everyday occurrence for businesses of all sizes to migrate many of their needs to SaaS.

There are also SaaS applications that serve as components of a comprehensive IT landscape. But when we look at creating and maintaining the overall technology infrastructure in an organization, a single SaaS application really isn't able to provide full-on IT services. So IT has been finding more usefulness in the world of cloud services that have their roots in supporting IT and developers. IT is able to take advantage of cloud-based platforms, such Infrastructure as a Service, for core technology tools.

Obviously, in terms of data and technology interoperability, SaaS and cloud services must integrate with the entire IT world, much of which is still on-premises. Business processes and data-flows now run from cloud to on premises and back. Businesses need agile technology tools to handle the increasing hybrid infrastructures of many organizations.

The overlapping of data and application integration has been accelerating, particularly with the growth of cloud-based integration solutions. Out of this convergence has emerged the cloud integration platform iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service). iPaaS is evolving into a new class of technology that supports hybrid infrastructures, and both business and IT users.

IPaaS has its origins in Data Integration as a Service targeting business users, and in data integration solutions for the proliferating silos of data in the cloud. It has been growing into a platform that also offers services for IT and developers, to more deftly handle multiple integration scenarios. iPaaS often functions as an orchestration hub for complex integration processes. And it is increasingly taking on more "traditional" data integration scenarios.

With iPaaS, business users can handle more of the basic integration tasks through self-service data integration, taking the load from IT and data management teams. And IT is becoming more in tune with the self-service economy, by taking advantage of pre-built, reusable services that speed up the creation of more complex data integration processes. Through a services approach to data and application integration, IT can more quickly keep up with business demands.

For the service economy, iPaaS has to be more than just another development platform for the tech savvy. The ultimate outcome of iPaaS should always be the creation of services – iPaaS itself is a means to an end. The services created contribute to iPaaS serving as an orchestration platform that can accomplish a great deal for organizations:

• Continue to grow the IT-Business partnership by using iPaaS as the means for business users to plan, design and execute integration processes; and by using iPaaS as a collaboration platform for IT and Business to improve any and all integration processes to more quickly meet dynamic business needs
• Utilize iPaaS services to streamline management of integrations and API environments from beginning to end
• Create a single environment where numerous technologies converge and interoperate with centralized management
• Engender the growth of transparency and insight for improved operational intelligence

While iPaaS solutions have evolved tremendously over the past few years, there are still miles to go. Several vendors have realized that with the disparate variety of data and business usage for integrations, critical functions like data quality, data governance and master data management must be added as core services for iPaaS. API management is another critical component, particularly since cloud services have a tight relationship to the development and usage of mobile apps that create and consume large volumes of data.

 

Image source: http://www.wunderground.com/wximage/canon30dguy/19

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for MSPs and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM's PivotPoint. Dedicated to providing valuable insight from industry thought leaders, PivotPoint offers expertise to help you develop, differentiate and scale your business.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting

 

Intelligent Transportation Systems for Midsized Cities

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When intelligent transportation systems are discussed, the focus is usually on mega-cities (populations of 10 million or more). But midsized cities (anywhere from 250,000 to 1 million people) face many of the same issues as larger cities, especially regarding forward-thinking planning for transportation systems. In fact, midsized cities are still a significant untapped market for intelligent transportation systems.

Right now transportation system technologies are evolving faster than overall management strategies. Adding to the management 'chaos': the proliferation of massive amounts of data related to transportation systems, including machine-generated big data. For midsized cities, data is a key asset for the planning, control and advancement of intelligent transportation systems.

When intelligent transportation systems take advantage of advanced data analytics, the value that results includes optimized infrastructure management and operations, as well as improved transportation services in terms of variety of modes, safety, reliability, and efficiency. Transportation data analytics also contribute greatly to real-time improvements to traveler / user experiences.

Categories of transportation data include:

• User or traveler behavioral data – survey data, social media sources, video, monitoring
• Travel demand and system use – monitoring data, machine-generated sources
• Socio‐Economic data – land use, demographics, income
• Transportation services – frequently as machine-generated data from sensors and meters
• Traffic management data – primarily machine-generated sources
• Infrastructure – roadways, facilities, vehicle fleets
• Environmental impact – emissions/air quality, local health concerns, other pollution/contaminants

Urban transportation networks frequently exist in an ecosystem of transportation modes and other urban governance entities in order to consolidate overall vision, resources and functions, which can lead to better outcomes for all. Intelligent transportation systems should support data sharing across modes, functions and stakeholders to show the value of collecting all relevant data, as well as being able to deliver data to different data management and analytics structures. And "stakeholders" aren't just humans – machines and automated systems are often around-the-clock consumers of transportation data.

 

Managed Services for Midsized Transportation Systems

I've written before about the differentiation that managed services providers can create by concentrating on specific industries and developing the distinct services that will make a difference to that industry. To provide niche or industry-specific services means developing in-depth expertise for the service offering, both in terms of the industry or niche and the problems that need to be solved.

Managed services can be developed to help midsized cities improve intelligent transportation systems through the use of advanced data analytics. The focus should be on new ways to deliver cost-effective services and solutions through cloud platforms, lower priced data analytics tools, and mobile applications.

Beyond services for the continuous data analytics needed to govern and improve urban transportation, managed services providers can help midsized cities understand how to apply analytics results to achieve significant improvements to transportation systems in multiple areas:

• Personalized interactions with citizens using transportation systems
• New services created more quickly
• Real-time operational responsiveness
• Measuring the effectiveness of current decisions and actions

Such services and solutions should be tailored for midsized cities to keep costs down and provide exactly what these cities need for faster, more effective transportation systems to better serve their citizens. A one-size-fits-all approach rarely works. Managed services providers need to craft core services and implementation templates that can be easily customized for different cities and their transportation systems.

 

Image source: swarco.com

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for MSPs and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM's PivotPoint. Dedicated to providing valuable insight from industry thought leaders, PivotPoint offers expertise to help you develop, differentiate and scale your business.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting

Reducing Risk for Self-Service Data Integration

 

Cloud platforms and SaaS solutions have opened the door to service-oriented strategies for the day-to-day infrastructure and applications needs of organizations. These "off premises" approaches to business functions have helped reduce costs and improve workplace access and productivity. But, as a side effect, managed services providers are losing some of their traditional services domains as companies continue to migrate systems and work activities to cloud services.

There is increasing pressure on MSPs to innovate services in new areas to sustain their businesses, particularly to contribute to real business outcomes (and not just IT infrastructure) and provide more direct business user support. MSPs should consider compelling opportunities for developing "middleware" services that fill in gaps around cloud solutions, especially for helping business users get more out of these solutions, while protecting users and the organization.

Over the years, IT services providers have profited well from building and maintaining data and application integrations for on-premises and cloud infrastructures. Recently vendor offerings for self-service data integration have been growing, with the business user as a primary target. The increased adoption of self-service data integration has the potential to cut into data integration services from MSPs.

Self-service data integration is an intriguing approach to connecting business users to actual integration tools; however this approach is filled with risk that must be addressed. Unfortunately hype from a number of data integration software vendors tries to make the case that self-service data integration is easy-peasy for the business user. The reality is far from this simplified view. But that doesn't mean self-service data integration is a bad idea. And it actually opens up an opportunity for third-party consultants and managed services providers to create valuable services that better support business users – and reduce risk – when working with data integration.

To ensure that business users do the work correctly and avoid serious missteps, self-service data integration has to be narrowly defined, with guidance at every step. MSPs could create a "middleware" services layer for particular self-service data integration offerings that better protects and guides business users when leveraging these offerings. It would be a sort of 'managed intervention services' – protecting and coaching business users when utilizing data integration services, to better understand what is going on and how to use the self-service approach.

Business users have to understand both the business aspects and the technical means to successfully perform self-service data integration. For example, MSPS can provide missing guidance (be assured - there is plenty of missing guidance in these offerings) to help business users utilize data modeling and data definitions that are necessary to stay on the right path for integrations that will correctly produce the data results that are needed. This can be accomplished both through supplemental technology services, and through training / coaching that can be embedded in technology services or handled in live engagements. Internal IT teams often have little time to create such guidance and training for business users.

There are also extremely complex data integration processes that should never be attempted by business users – but these users should have access to the resulting data for their own projects. In these instances managed services can fill the gap by delivering ready-to-use data to business users. MSPs can create the processes that handle complex integrations, making available the resulting data with the assurance that the integrations have been tested and verified by the services provider.

Working with business users for self-service data integration also means that MSPs will now have the mastery to take direct advantage of self-service data integration tools, along with other cloud data integration platforms, to build other data-related services for their clients. There are always numerous data integration projects that are never undertaken because of time and resource constraints for IT and business teams. For many MSPs and consultants, self-service data integration in the cloud can be a faster means to solve data integration headaches for their clients.

Self-service data integration still has a long road to travel before it becomes an everyday tool for many business users. MSPs should look at creating services that help business users today, as well as in the future, to safely and smartly take advantage of self-service data integration as a route to improve the data needed every day for all levels of decision-making, innovation and other workplace requirements.

 

Image source: plexxi.com

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for MSPs and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM's PivotPoint. Dedicated to providing valuable insight from industry thought leaders, PivotPoint offers expertise to help you develop, differentiate and scale your business.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting

Data Integration Services Evolution

 

 

With the increased usage of data analytics to help solve business problems and improve strategies, data integration has come more to the forefront as a critical component of overall technologies for data-savvy organizations. New approaches and technologies for data integration are coming into play to better meet what organizations need, especially to support increased business user access to data management itself.

Over the past several years, data integration services have continued to grow and evolve, thanks largely to the cloud. Tapping into SaaS approaches, the early entrants were data integration as a service and purpose-built or pre-built data integrations.

 

Data Integration -- as a Service

Data Integration-as-a-service (IaaS) became possible as more organizations made use of SaaS, cloud services and even B2B data exchanges. Business ecosystems began growing in size and complexity thanks to online connectivity, promoting ease-of-access for B2B relationships and interactions. As more data flowed in the cloud, the need and demand for integration picked up momentum. Originally IaaS functioned as an IT-oriented service, mostly in stand-alone instances. But IaaS instances were soon embedded in other cloud services and applications, as well as cloud infrastructure platforms.

The ability to quickly move data to where it is needed must evolve beyond cloud services that only provide basic APIs and web services that still require users to build connections. While leveraging APIs and web services for loosely-coupled integration processes, IaaS rapidly added more sophisticated capabilities such as virtualized data services, governance, REST-ful services, and agile interoperability at multiple levels.

Cloud-based IaaS has since progressed into Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS). The data integration services evolution now involves comprehensive platforms that leverage cloud services for the creation and execution of integration processes or flows that connect to systems in the cloud and on premises -- within a single entity or across multiple organizations. Services include critical capabilities: data governance and management, metadata discovery, data quality, transformation rules, agile access to data sources – all delivered with automation and ease-of-deployment as important aspects of the overall platform.

 

Purpose-Built Data Integrations

As a more narrow approach to integration, purpose-built data integration is designed to meet a specific business need, with pre-defined capabilities bundled in the solution. Frequently purpose-built data integration comes as an appliance. Purpose-built data integration services in the cloud comprise an evolutionary step for making data integration services available to business users, to initiate integrations between specific sources or applications.

Cloud services for purpose-built integrations usually include data replication, migration, and synchronizations for customer data. Typically integrations involve specific SaaS applications like Salesforce.com and Netsuite as "pre-set" sources and targets.

These services work with focused use cases where business users do not have to make lots of decisions about how the integrations will be accomplished. Wizards are employed to walk business users through the process. However, at minimum, business users must have knowledge of the sources and targets, and basic understanding of the data integration task, to work confidently and accurately through the purpose-built approach.

 

Business Innovation from Data Integration Services

The evolution of data integration services must align dynamically to the business as it changes. Business users require rapid responsiveness to integration needs, through technology that is 'proactively' ready for many use cases that reflect expected and realistic business situations. Innovations for cloud-based data integration services contribute to optimal business performance and to the faster delivery of valuable data that frequently has a short shelf life of relevance.

Data integration services can tap into the rich value of the cloud and how it connects businesses through common services, with business processes providing contextual frameworks. Such data and process agility underpins must-haves for the competitive organization: always-on intelligence, new business opportunities, innovations in products and business models, robust collaborative processes for the ever-growing business ecosystem.

 

Image source: trendmicro.com

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for MSPs and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM's PivotPoint. Dedicated to providing valuable insight from industry thought leaders, PivotPoint offers expertise to help you develop, differentiate and scale your business.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting

 

The Missing Pieces of Master Data Management Services

 

A master data initiative is meant to deliver a unified and well-integrated source of cross-organizational data that is reliable and up-to-date, while eliminating silos and redundancies across the organization. Master data management (MDM) software solutions comprise an essential piece for trustworthy analytics that lead to better decision-making. Master data is also a much-needed accompaniment for big data analytics, providing critical context for big data, and as a means to connect big data analytics to business objectives and value.

We're seeing more offerings for MDM services from IT and solutions consultants, managed services providers, and software vendors – with cloud platforms playing a clear role in these offerings. Third party technology services often result in lower costs and faster time to solution use and to the engendering of business value. Unfortunately providers of MDM services frequently only target IT groups, and, as such, fail to include the very important business stakeholders in a client organization. A technology-only approach to MDM results in significant pieces missing from the puzzle, which will impede how well MDM will work for an organization, particularly to produce business value.

These missing pieces relate to people, organizational change and new processes, which in turn often give rise to internal political issues that must be identified and dealt with. For successful MDM initiatives, technology should take a back seat until thorough understanding is mapped out for the people, practices and processes of the organization. Otherwise there will be a serious impairment of the integrated vision of how a master data initiative impacts the organization and the work that is done to achieve business objectives.

A focus solely on technology ensures that the needs and requirements of the business won't be met, and that the MDM initiative will fail to address essential non-technology elements, such as relationships with key people. Business champions, stakeholders and influencers are all critical to the success of any MDM project.

Data governance is another crucial function that aligns the important elements of people, practices and processes with master data management. Again, the plan for data governance must be in place from the beginning of an MDM initiative. It is an essential apparatus for helping to mitigate the many obstacles that can plague MDM.

Third party services providers have a big opportunity for providing MDM services. But such services must include the business and people sides of the story. Often a neutral outside consultancy or service provider can help achieve the organizational change required for MDM to make a difference for businesses. Service provider insight and experience enables the identification of problems from the beginning and provides useful solutions and guidance for clients to mitigate internal politics.

Services providers must be prepared to develop a well-structured MDM vision for clients that aligns to and realistically supports overall corporate strategies, business unit goals and optimal business operations. Such a vision must address not only how business is done today, but what organizations want to accomplish further down the road. A focus on technology alone cannot achieve this sort of visionary work. By providing the full scope of work for MDM initiatives, a service provider will stand well above those who only focus on MDM as a technology "project".

 

Image source: http://www.danpontefract.com/give-piece-a-chance/

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for MSPs and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM's PivotPoint. Dedicated to providing valuable insight from industry thought leaders, PivotPoint offers expertise to help you develop, differentiate and scale your business.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting

 

Connecting the Cyber-Threat Dots through Big Data

 

The managed security services market has been in play for more than a decade. Not surprisingly, it continues to show vibrant growth, fueled in part by cloud-related factors. Research and Markets, in a January 2015 report, estimated that market growth will run from $14.3 billion in 2014 to $31.9 billion by 2019 (with a CAGR of 17.3%). Growth for security services touches just about every industry, and all sizes of organizations.

Managed services providers are tasked with marrying expertise in cybersecurity and cloud with big data analytics to deliver comprehensive protection and proactive measures to their clients. Proactive cybersecurity services call for the implementation of far-reaching and sophisticated data and event management technologies and services, to improve the aggregation and analysis of security event big data. Managed security services should address the imperative for integrating many disparate sources, including big data sources, to derive event correlation that can be aligned with other analytics to continuously improve alerts, preemptive processes, and real-time reporting.

Today's cyber security threats frequently operate as patterns that usually deviate from the expected behavior for most authorized users or for activity on particular devices or IP addresses. To identify and fight such attacks, security teams need technology services that can find and analyze deviant trends. This is a natural fit for big data mining and analytics combined with state-of-the-art cybersecurity programs.

Machine-generated data provides fertile ground for using big data analytics to root out cyber security threats. Machine data lives in the IT infrastructure: network logs, event logs, firewall and security system data, web logs, email logs – anything and everything operating in the infrastructure. But machine-generated data can be quite problematic for aggregation, data mining and analytics. Such data must be processed very quickly, frequently in real-time and usually exists in large volumes that are continuously proliferating. Machine data sources are quite variable, many of which are multi-structured formats that further challenge data mining efforts.

Once data has been extracted from machine-generated sources it can be enriched with other kinds of data to establish context, and elicit patterns and trends related to cyber attacks. Managed analytics services can take on a forensics quality while searching through data for patterns of irregular or unexpected activity. For instance, realtime endpoint forensic data capture and analysis is on the rise to plug yet another hole in systems infrastructure, in order to block data breach entry points.

Situational awareness is another important aspect of fighting cyber attacks. The overarching value of situational awareness is continuously knowing what is going on around the organization, to "instantly" respond to certain events. Big data analytics strengthen situational awareness primarily through fast real-time assessments that can reduce time to decisions and actions in response to potential threats and certain anomalies. These sorts of analytics also require corroboration from subject matter experts, to help make the best decisions based on the data at hand. And this opens up yet another "cybersecurity frontier" for managed services providers where knowledge and expertise are just as important as optimally running technologies.

 

Image source: platfora.com

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for MSPs and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM's PivotPoint. Dedicated to providing valuable insight from industry thought leaders, PivotPoint offers expertise to help you develop, differentiate and scale your business.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting

 

Moving Target: Cybersecurity and Integrated Managed Services

 

Cybersecurity continues to encompass the pressing need for detailed, broad and varied solution capabilities. Implementing, maintaining and updating comprehensive cybersecurity solutions frequently seem to be daunting tasks for organizations of all sizes. Simplifying cybersecurity solutions is appealing as a beneficial goal -- but the more useful approach right now is to streamline integrated services to handle a broad range of capabilities. Often different industries require specialized security solutions; customization requirements are often part of the mix for many organizations. Managed services providers can cost-effectively handle these sorts of individualized needs as 'business as usual'.

 

Cybersecurity and the Cloud

Like data management and analytics, the cloud impacts cybersecurity solutions on two fronts: the need to provide extensive cybersecurity capabilities for cloud-based applications and services; and the transition to security services and solutions based in the cloud themselves.

A recent article quoted a survey that revealed the problems still challenging organizations for effective cybersecurity to protect work done in the cloud:

 In the face of rapid growth of cloud infrastructure across IT, security has not been able to keep up with the pace of change. Approximately 65 percent of respondents say it takes three months or longer to deploy a new security solution for cloud infrastructure environments. The survey showed that more than three-quarters of survey respondents experience tool fatigue and nearly as many said traditional tools don't scale well in cloud environments…

The survey showed that 77 percent of security leaders say they have too many point solutions to do security well in cloud environments, and 76 percent say they lack visibility into attacks through cloud infrastructure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image source: CDN

 

 

Comprehensive integrated / bundled managed services can contribute greatly to reducing the complexity of end-to-end cybersecurity solutions, while drawing on MSP expertise in multiple technology areas that matter greatly for effective cybersecurity. MSPs need to develop integrated services that address the needs of both cloud and on-premises technologies and work processes, while utilizing elastic methodologies to better defend overall infrastructures from cyber threats.

Cloud-based cybersecurity services align well with the movement of managed services to the cloud, to increase flexibility and reduce costs in ways that pay off for clients. It's important to remember that cybersecurity is very technology-intensive and can be quite complex 'internally'. While MSPs can create streamlined services that work well for clients, the less viable notion right now is the ability to make cybersecurity "simple" (in the way that basic SaaS services are known for). It still takes well-experienced tech experts on the job to make sure everything is continuously updated and working optimally.

 

Continuous Data Management and Analytics

Data is an integral part of effective cybersecurity services, to build consolidated views across all infrastructures (cloud, on-premises) in order to locate and monitor cyber threats as they occur. Data must be analyzed, understood and put to work to continuously anticipate new threats and improve technologies and processes for better protection over time.

Data sources include big data that comes from many areas both inside and outside the firewall. Big data analytics, combined with other data sources, can process: patterns of behavior preceding attacks; attack attributes; and other analyses -- to derive invaluable context to better understand how cybersecurity services should respond to and prevent threats. Predictive analytics processes lead to crafting methods to head off new kinds of attacks. Big data analytics will take MSPs into more 'creative' services that must continuously evolve and be highly responsive to the ultra-fast kaleidoscope of cyber attacks.

 

Through integrated / bundled managed services that encompass cybersecurity, cloud platforms, and data management and analytics, MSPs can take on all aspects of comprehensive cybersecurity solutions to free up in-house IT teams for other important tasks -- particularly for proactive business technology activities that directly support the business endeavors, goals and objectives of the organization.

 

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for MSPs and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM's PivotPoint. Dedicated to providing valuable insight from industry thought leaders, PivotPoint offers expertise to help you develop, differentiate and scale your business.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Riding the Mobile Data Highway

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image source:  cisco.com

 

Vendors and services providers for mobility management solutions can overly fixate on the vast array of software platforms and services for "corralling" mobile devices and ensuring secure computing. While these are vital areas, ultimately to enable successful organizations it can be far more important to provide services to amplify the value of what employees are doing with mobile devices. Particularly as businesses have become more mobile, the never-ending ebb and flow of data has made comprehensive data management a mission critical element both for business agility and for guaranteeing trustworthy, useable data.

Mobility adds a distinct flavor to real-time data management, particularly since mobile is a top source of big data. But data by itself – no matter the source – carries no value. Even worse, poorly managed data can cause real harm to organizations. Real value accrues when data sources are streamlined and cleaned up, when the processes that consume and create data are more responsive to business needs, and when business users trust the data they are using for decisions and work requirements.

Obviously business data is everywhere these days, as cloud services and mobile software offerings keep pace with worker preferences for tools. End-to-end task workflows may even take place on multiple platforms, off and on premises. The future of applications for mobile devices is ultimately about providing the workforce with the data they need, when they need it and where they need it. With a growing "mobile first" mindset for workers, organizations must enable as much functionality for their employees as possible while also ensuring data - and corporate - security.

One of the important changes for data management solutions is the demand for many different ways that integration processes can be created and used. Not only do data integration platforms need to be high performance, they must continue to innovate ways to connect to data where it lives, and then perform any number of actions to take data where it is needed. Added to integration and management imperatives is the ongoing battle to eliminate more data silos, to speed up access to the right data from mobile devices.

With 'speed to solution' as a crucial aspect of mobile data management, managed services can play an important role to provide what many organizations need, by applying expertise in mobility and cloud services to 'old school' data management processes and mindsets. True data mobility gives rise to data flows consistently and "effortlessly" (from the user perspective) between any points whether cloud or on premises.

Managed services have a natural fit with the management of the entire life cycle of mobile data and information. The objective is to keep up with changes regarding where data is created and stored, and where it needs to flow, to reach everyone in the organization who can benefit from such data. So mobile data management is as much about continuously creating and maintaining the right business processes as it is about data access and security.

Process-centric initiatives are often optimal approaches for the things that companies want to accomplish. Business processes make it possible to directly connect work to business outcomes that lend themselves to various metrics that provide clarity for business performance. It is through business processes that data can be mapped to business value.

Some of the difficulty for transitioning how enterprises derive value from business processes (and the data running through them) is the fact that most data-related initiatives have been driven by IT instead of by business-oriented roles. To enable better business outcomes, mobile data management initiatives need to bring business and IT teams together as symbiotic partners. Managed services providers can be the game-changing bridge to promote strong relationships between business and IT teams in order to best support a growing mobile workforce.

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for MSPs and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM's PivotPoint. Dedicated to providing valuable insight from industry thought leaders, PivotPoint offers expertise to help you develop, differentiate and scale your business.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective