Metadata At The Crossroads…
A Relentless Pursuit Of Implementations And Applications
Of Metadata-Enabled Management To Maximize The
Value Of Investment In Information technology …
Ian Rowlands, Senior Director of Strategy, ASG
September 15, 2011
www.asg.com
Copyright®2011 Allen Systems Group, Inc.
Agenda
Where
We Stand
How The
World Is
Changing
Where
We Are
Headed
Some
History
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Copyright®2011 Allen Systems Group, Inc.
Some History
1974 (approximately) : MSP Datamanager
1986 R&O Rochade
2001 Soamai becubic
2009 ASG-metaGlossary
2011 ASG-METAMDM
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Copyright®2011 Allen Systems Group, Inc.
The Crossroads
“Enterprise”
metadata
management
Metadata
management as
a capability to
enable realtime IT
Metadata
management as
a capability to
optimize
essential
BUSINESS
functions
Metadata
management as
a capability to
optimize
essential IT
functions
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Copyright®2011 Allen Systems Group, Inc.
Where We Stand
ASG-metaGlossary
Business Glossary
ASG deploys a valuable
and increasingly
interconnected set of
metadata solutions – but
it’s not enough!
ASG-Rochade
Enterprise Repository
ASG-Manager
Products
Mainframe Repository
ASG-becubic
Applications
Repository
ASG-metaCMDB
Infrastructure
Repository
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How The World Is Changing
Shift to knowledge work
Increased IT driven business risk
Demand for changing IT cost model
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Megatrends: The Metadata Explosion
Semantic (Meaning) Richness
Now –
Knowledge
Workers
2000 –
Information
Specialists
90’s – Data
Strategists
metadata
Late-70’s-80’s
Technical /
Programmer
metadata
Syntactic (Structural) Richness
"Much of the work of finding,
interpreting and connecting relevant
pieces of information, negotiating
meanings and eliciting knowledge in
conversations with others, creating
new ideas and using them to come up
with a final product, happens in the
head of a knowledge worker or as part
of communication or doing work."
(Efimova 2004)
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Increasing IT Driven Business Risk
Risk of information misuse
Risk of corporate exposure
• Misinterpreted information
• Governance and compliance
• Bad decisions
• Data theft
• Using the wrong information
• Criminal and corporate liability
• Using the right information incorrectly
• Loss of intellectual property
• Using information that is
• Legal repercussions
out of date
Risk of business inertia
• Inability to find information in a timely
manner
• Inability to combine information
• Failure to collaborate
How can
information risks
be mitigated?
Risk of excessive cost
• Loss of IT investment
• Significant training/retraining
• Recreating existing work product
• Assistance required to find information
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Copyright®2011 Allen Systems Group, Inc.
The Demand For A Changing IT Cost Model
Much scholarly work has attempted
to prove (or disprove) the “value” of
IT
• Dr. Tim Lincoln, IBM Sesame Studies, 1986
• Paul Strassman (Information Payoff, The
Squandered Computer)
• Nicolas Carr “IT Doesn’t Matter”, “The End
of Corporate IT
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Copyright®2011 Allen Systems Group, Inc.
The Demand For A Changing IT Cost Model
As a business resource, information technology today
looks a lot like electric power did at the start of the last
century [when manufacturers built and maintained their
own generators]. Companies go to vendors to purchase
various components — computers, storage drives,
network switches and all sorts of software — and
cobble them together into complex informationprocessing plants, or data centers, that they house
within their own walls. They hire specialists to maintain
the plants, and they often bring in outside consultants
to solve particularly thorny problems. Their executives
are routinely sidetracked from their real business —
manufacturing automobiles, for instance, and selling
them at a profit — by the need to keep their company’s
private IT infrastructure running smoothly.
Nicholas G. Carr, The End of Corporate Computing,
MIT Sloan Management Review, Spring 2005
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The Transitioning Enterprise IT Environment
Private
Mainframe
Virtualized
Distributed
Cloud
Public
Cloud
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How Does This Affect Metadata Management?
Strategically
• Elevates the corporate perception of the value of the metadata asset
• Requires “industrialized” metadata management applications
• Broadens the scope (massively) of metadata discovery and access
Tactically
• Requires a rethink of model/metamodel relationships
• Demands new style user interface / access capabilities
• Requires capabilities to integrate metadata management and business
applications
• Forces the pace of federation development
• Extends requirements for authentication / authorization capabilities
• ….
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Industrialized Metadata Management Applications
There is an emerging recognition of the need to
apply metadata management to problems like
Business Glossary, Master Data Management,
Governance and Data Warehouse Management
•“Standard” metadata implementations struggle to gain business
user acceptance
•Visionary implementations often collapse under their own
weight
ASG has recognize the need for an “industrialized”
approach to creating applications to address the
business issues, and has created a new class of
product, the “metaApp”
•ASG-metaGlossary was created drawing on experience from
DDIC and the Data Warehouse Management Application
•ASG-metaMDM will continue the process
•Product development will focus on capabilities that enable ASG
and customer metaApp development
“Standard”
metadata
management
Dependent
on “Craft
Work”
Visionary
metadata
implementations
Metadata
enabled
solutions to
significant
business issues
“Master
Class”
Skills shift
to USAGE
not creation
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Example metaApp Roadmap
for Server Provisioning
Change Mgmt
Governance
Phase 3
Phase 1
Zena Automation
Phase 2
Phase 4
CMDB Integration
zKoss UI
Provisioning
Engine
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The Broadened Scope Of Metadata Management
Off Premise
Cloud
On-Premise
Computing
OnPremise
Cloud
The logical
enterprise
server
The dispersed
workforce
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The Broadened Scope Of Metadata Management
Managed
Environment
Managing
Environment
Consuming
Environment
Where does the
metadata reside?
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Model / metamodel relationships: Current State
There are:
• Application models
• Corporate models (generally user defined)
• Some “subject / generic” models (e.g., RDBMs)
• Many technology-specific models
There is no general framework
There is no obvious “rule” about where a model fits
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The Metadata Landscape
Governance
Information
Business Rules
Business Processes
Semantic Repository
Enterprise
Repository
Application
Repository
Web Services
Registries
Data models and
definitions
Infrastructure
(metaCMDB)
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Copyright®2011 Allen Systems Group, Inc.
A Simple Proposal
Application
Models
Which inherit
from:
The Enterprise
Model
Which
consolidates:
Subject Models
Which reconcile
/ rationalize:
Technologyspecific Models
All of the items types and all of the potential relationships implied by all of the
subject models would be enormous! In practice, each enterprise uses its own
unique combination to form the enterprise model
Terminology
ARIS
Organization
Provision
Processes
Oracle
RDBMS’s
DB2
Applications
Java
PL/I
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Refining The Subject Model
Terminology
Content
Terminology – describing
business concepts is, in a
sense, the “master” and
bridges the other “subjects”
Data
Process
Applications
Services
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The User Interface Challenge
“Just Click It”
Business Users don’t want a
special user interface –
maybe not even a search
box – but information at the
click of a mouse!
www.asg.com
Copyright®2011 Allen Systems Group, Inc.
ASG Product Areas
Performance
Management
Cloud Portal
Cloud Application
on Demand
Cloud
Infrastructure
Provisioning
ITOMS
CMS
Infrastructure &
Operations
Management
Suite
Cloud
Management
Suite
EAMS
Cloud-in-a-Box
Operations
Management
Infrastructure
Management
Foundation
Technology
APM
Application Portfolio
Management
Application
Mainframe
Management
AMS
DIMS
Information and
Document
Management
Application
Management
Suite
Data &
Information
Management
Suite
Metadata
Management
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Copyright®2011 Allen Systems Group, Inc.
Summary
The world of Information Technology is going through
generational changes
ASG has a history of responding well to such changes,
notably in the metadata management space
We are adjusting based on our history
We assert our continued passion for metadata
excellence!
www.asg.com
Copyright®2011 Allen Systems Group, Inc.