Business Information Unification - are you ready for more responsibility (page 1 of 2)

You can see the need for ebusiness integration falling onto the CIOs desk and indeed where would the board turn to with enterprise application integration?

But Business Information Unification refers to much more than these added headaches, now we are concerned with the information held within the applications, the data we all hold so dear, together with its business use and its integration with other systems.

Set to become a top priority of senior managers in future, Business Information Unification is the convergence of unstructured-content management tools and portals with the content of enterprise systems and legacy applications creating unified content across an organisation increasing the value of that most prized asset a company's data.

Together with staff resource and financial capital, information is now one of the most important assets of any company. If the CIOs didn't have a huge responsibility before they do now and should be rated accordingly.

The CIO now manages the entire responsibility for the organisation's information assets, they decide on hardware and software architectures as well as on the relevant policy, set service level agreements, are key to any disaster recovery strategy, are responsible for prioritising new applications (which can mean the difference between success and failure of the company).

But, unlike most managers, CIOs can't have an off-day. They can't tread water for even a minute, because, unlike most managers, they are under scrutiny at all times - a system slows up and the entire organisation knows about it.

For example, what are the reasons for the failure of any ebusiness project? Projects are not always destined for success even with the right software. No strategy, lack of experience, a trial-and-error approach, and complexity was underestimated, customer demand was grossly overestimate, and time scales were incorrect.

Choosing the wrong software is also high on the list of mistakes. Just because it says "sales" on the box does not mean it will bring business in through the door.

Organisations have to start to understand the diversity of the CIOs role. They are predominately seen as implementers of applications rather than the visionaries behind decisions that clearly affect information as a resource and, as a result, a company's business.

IT strategy requires a long-term view. With the need for information to become more integrated within the business the need for the CIO to make the leap between IT manager and general business strategist/manager is all the more necessary.

It appears that although most senior manages do give some thought to ERP and ebusiness, they have not thought about the need to integrate these applications. They usually leave the technical subjects to the IT department, who try to manage this costly task more or less without board intervention.

By concentrating on their business critical applications, companies lose sight of the information stored within them. Furthermore data integration is discussed in isolation at departmental and application levels creating still further silos of information throughout the organisation, which defeats the aim of the exercise by preventing the users from accessing the information within the applications.

Create a Proper Enterprise Storage Management System
Data integration, which, given its relevance to strategic decisions, becomes a matter for the most senior of managers, involves much more than simply mastering integration at data level.