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November 8, 2006
Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2006 in Cannes, Day Three
Enterprise Platform Migration is a major theme for the coming years, according to Andy Kyte, one of Gartners most well-known analysts. Enterprise Platform Migration has the magnitude of the Year 2000 problem, or the introduction of the Euro, a huge operation in the organizations technological infrastructure and business application portfolio. If you are an SAP user, at one point Netweaver will hit your organization. If you are an Oracle user, you need to think about how to work with Fusion Middleware. Although Andy didnt use the term, but various ecosystems of power vendors have emerged, often referred to as MISO (Microsoft, IBM, SAP and Oracle), and choices need to be made. If you have a more heterogeneous systems landscape, you need figure out which choices the best of breed vendors are making in terms of ecosystem support, and see if they fit your strategic choices. I dont think it will be possible for large enterprises to standardize on a single ecosystem, there will be elements of multiple ecosystems present, and they will compete for dominance. And its not only about a shift in integration between applications, the way the applications work dramatically changes as well. Moving from application silos to a more component-based approach, allowing power users to design and maintain their own business processes. According to Gartner, enterprise platform migration will be a major challenge for most, if not all, large enterprises.
Interesting enough, and thats my analysis, BI plays an important role in coping with Enterprise Platform Migration. Traditionally, BI has had the role of integrating management information from various sources and shielding users from the complexities of that integration. Using BI as the focal point for that migration, will make the process considerably better manageable.
Consider the sport of speed skating as a metaphor. In speed skating, your left leg swings to the left, then your right leg swings to the right and the net result is that you go forward quite fast. That is how you implement the Enterprise Platform Migration and BI in parallel as well.
A small BI implementation, for example, perhaps based on a temporary interface to an old ERP system, provides some focus on a number of strategic key performance indicators. The subsequent ERP phase can take that into account: And BI is no longer an afterthought.
This ERP phase then provides insight into how easy or hard it is to get to new transactional data and provides input for a new data domain. It allows the BI deployment team to more accurately plan the next BI deployment with these new insights. The next BI implementation goes more smoothly and even provides a feedback loop into the delivered ERP phase, which can be used to better design the next ERP phase, and so on. A path of growing insight - where ERP and BI leverage each other - emerges.
Enterprise Platform Migration is about much more than better management information alone. But data management” is a crucial part of every platform. BI provides that focal point. With Enterprise Platform Migration on the agenda, the ice skating approach presents the opportunity to architect the pieces with far greater alignment this time around.
Posted by Frank Buytenkijk at November 8, 2006 4:44 AM
