The road to e-business maturity goes through enterprise information management, says IDC

Businesses are racing toward ever-greater uses of Internet technology to achieve e-business maturity. According to IDC, those who slow down long enough to formulate an enterprise information management (EIM) strategy will be best positioned to survive the e-business transition.

"A fully mature e-business environment requires a coherent system of interoperating parts, which demands deep integration of all its elements," said Carl Olofson, research director for IDC`s Application Development and Deployment program. "Well-developed techniques for managing foreground, background, and intermediate data are critical to the overall success of any e-business deployment effort. A comprehensive approach is called for, and such activities should be coordinated under the banner of EIM."

According to IDC, several data categories figure into an EIM strategy, including transactional, referential, analytical, intermediate, unstructured, and rich media. Some of the key requirements for managing enterprise data are to efficiently synchronize, compare, and integrate reference data; continuously update analytical data; manage transaction data for e-business intelligence and problem solutions; and preserve critical external business documentation. "The objective is to make enterprise information available anywhere and manageable regardless of location, while ensuring that it is as current as it needs to be for any context in which it may be accessed," Olofson said.

IDC believes the fundamental strategic elements of EIM for e-business include data distribution/consolidation, new functionality, application integration, business intelligence integration, and enterprise content publication. IDC recently published Surviving the E-business Transition: Strategies for Enterprise Information Management (IDC #B24293). This bulletin explores the evolving nature of e-business and various possible strategies for enterprise information management designed to address the requirements of e-business going forward. It also reviews available software technologies and the product strategies of their vendors.