David Van Couvering’s post undergirds the idea that Wiki integration will become the next data integration trend soon. Incompatibility between heterogeneous Wiki formats is an issue, definitely. As a result, a number of software vendors are already developing some integrators between Wikis, blogs, e-mails, and so on.

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) will surely accelerate this future trend. The more enterprises, as well as their departments, consolidate with 3^rd parties, the more they need data-and-knowledge integration. As an “Enterprise 2.0” essential element, Wiki can be seen as a “service” inside enterprise’s SOA model, too. Therefore, some integration tools will be needed to weave Wiki-based data between either sources, or applications.

And you know what? Since Wiki is a collaborative-based effort, open source will be a winner in this game, sooner or later.

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Eric Roch followed his “SOA ESB Product Selection” post with the new one, “ESB SOA RFP Questions”. There he compiled a comprehensive list of generic Request for Proposal (RFP) and Request for Information (RFI) questions that help select ESB/SOA product. Thanks, Eric!

However, even if you have already chosen a vendor, Mr. Roch’s list will surely help you gain more understanding of ESB/SOA implementation. It is better to analyze the answers to all these questions before you sign the contracts. Commonly, there are some challenges and hidden misunderstandings. Be aware and avoid them.   

 

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There are some briefly described pre-requirements and useful considerations for a ‘real-time enterprise’ in this recent William McKnight’s post. To achieve real-time data warehouses, William also suggests rescheduling ‘batch’ ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) to run more frequently.

I’d add that it’s not about rescheduling frequency only; it’s about rescheduling the very moments of ETL operations. Sometimes it is not enough to increase the frequency, it even may be in vain. First, there’s a challenge of increased queue contentions. Second, there’s no use updating data, if there were no changes in it.

Some EAI advisors recommend using alert notifications instead. It is about defining the moments of updating as well as transforming data on an event basis, rather than according to a fixed schedule. However, it is clear that the real-time event model is more complicated, while developing. But as we see, EAI/ETL/EII vendors are already being forced to aiming at it, anyway.   

 

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‘Software as a Service’ gurus Zoli Erdos and David Linthicum commented on a new study by Nucleus Research. According to the report, companies of all sizes are shifting to project management and content management initiatives, while implementing SaaS technologies. Here’s how Zoli put it:

A new study by Nucleus Research confirms these findings:  63% of companies with over 1000 employees adopted some On-Demand solution, vs. 46% of those with less then 1000 employees.  The study turned up a few more “surprises”, perhaps the most striking one being the market-share of particular types of applications.  Salesforce.com is the poster-boy of SaaS, in fact many would argue they created this market, yet CRM appears to have a relatively low adoption rate amongst SaaS customers, only 32%.  Project Management comes close, 23% of the responding organizations deployed PM solutions.

So, Content Management and Project Management are currently the new growth areas in SaaS world. “Rapid implementation and ease of use were the two reasons cited most often for adoption,” Nucleus reported.

This survey shows how Software as a Service technology is evolving. WikiPedia has already become a standard, as we know. On the other hand, the need for effective collaboration is overwhelming, so it is not a surprise that enterprise CMS is moving towards SaaS.

A number of benefits explain why software vendors adopt SaaS model to improve their project management, too. Process integration is one of the main trends for this year, according to multiple researches.

As a result, one trend produces others.
 

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In an article about Regulatory Compliance and Data Quality, Robert Lerner mentioned watch lists, “the lists of suspect individuals, organizations, and countries with which it is unlawful for transact business with.”

“If an organization has problems in the quality of its customer data, then it will have difficulty making accurate matches against the watch lists. For example, if an organization has misspelled the name of a customer or potential customer – using Smith instead of Smyth – then the odds of correctly matching this customer against a watch list are slim.”

That reminded me of a true story I’ve heard about a man, say, Mr. Smith, who received a call from a bank one day. After ‘hellos’ and ‘how-do-you-dos’ bank officer asked that man to return to the bank and “sign the rest of the papers”.

“What papers?” Mr. Smith asked.

“The papers confirming that you transferred $1,000,000 from your account yesterday,” bank officer answered.

Mr. Smith was shocked. “Me?”

“Are you Mr. Smith?” bank officer asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you live in blah-blah-blah?”

“Yes.”

“Is your account number blah-blah-blah?”

“Yes.”

“Then it might be you who transferred $1,000,000 yesterday.”

In a few hours Mr. Smith found himself sitting in the bank watching yesterday’s video control system tapes. After additional verifications they noticed that there was a mistake in spelling Mr. Smith’s name. Everything was correct, first name, the country of residence, but the last name was misspelled in the papers. Just one letter, one silly letter was misspelled. The man who visited the bank the day before was, say, Mr. Smyth. That’s why the bank officer mixed up the clients and called the wrong number, he called Mr. Smith instead of Mr. Smyth.

That’s it. It’s all about data quality, data validation, data accuracy, etc., etc. Keep an eye on spelling your names, and avoid getting into a watch list.

Oh, yes, and install data integration software. =)

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