SOA and BI support the same goals

  • Article

Special thanks to Loraine Lawson for pointing out this excellent article in DMReview titled "BI, Process, and Integration Trends."

The article is clearly written with the audience of Business Intelligence (BI) specialists in mind.  However, it has some excellent points to make that Enterprise SOA folks will see value in. Highlights for a SOA audience:

"Key elements, which BI [Information Management] share with [Enteprise Integration Management], are data integration and process. Data integration is the technology enabler, while process addresses the authority and management of the information asset.

"The success of enterprise data integration hinges upon leveraging a mature information architecture and integration practices prevalent in BI, while evolving to account for recent architectural concepts, such as service-oriented architecture (SOA), to ensure the hunger for timely and meaningful information is satisfied .

The authors go on to list a series of challenges that are shared by BOTH integration and BI spaces.  I agree with this list wholeheartedly.  I have only listed the items.  The full article goes into a bit more detail on each.

  • Address the lack of a global data model.
  • Debate of using BI as an operational data store (ODS).
  • Define how and where to implement master/metadata; data cleansing, business/transformation rules.
  • Lack of data quality management within legacy and in-house applications.
  • Define an enterprise data integration architecture.
  • Acknowledge technology disruption from Web 2.0/SOA.
  • When selecting the right long-term partnership with vendors, one must look for the right mix of capabilities.

I'll end this summary with another excerpt that I think rings loud and clear to a SOA audience:

"BI and SOA architecture disciplines support similar needs: IM, metadata, data integration and data quality. There is an education process that must occur between the technology camps (and integration vendors) to ensure each understand and exploit the synergies of both architectures. At this time, tools and opinions abound, and the right choices must be rationalized against business values.

Advice: SOA folks: if you aren't already working with your BI team, pick up the phone.  Their mature processes and practices are able to address many of your issues, and the natural synergy between BI and SOA can make them a strong ally in the fight for a better, faster, cheaper, and more intelligent enterprise.