The enterprise is the next place where the disruption wave is going to happen. Who would have thunk it… you, perhaps? Okay, before you flame me, let me explain. Granted, enterprises are not known for taking bold innovative technology steps; indeed, it’s where legacy software [aka digital zombies] still seem to thrive. We all know stories of enterprises still running Cobol – the ultimate digital zombie that just won’t die. But on balance, it’s easy to understand why this is so. Enterprises tend to take their time changing the technological status quo. Moreover, incumbent vendors invest gobs on maintenance, support and making only gradual improvements. Are you still with me? Hope so, because things are changing.
New disruption waves include consumerization and BYOD among other trends, e.g. social. I want to talk about one particular disruptive trend which is specifically very important to Inforbix: semantic web. I caught the following publication earlier this week, The enterprise Web and the modern Enterprise in CMSWire. The article does a great job of explaining the main reasons why the future of enterprise systems requires semantic web to change:
- Key enterprise data assets are no longer confined to predictably structured transactional databases and data warehouses. Decision makers are relying on data buried in spreadsheets, in emails, in Access databases and in documents.
- Companies are increasingly drawing on data from outside their organization. They’re pulling together information from supply chain partners, from customers, from social media sites, from websites and public web databases.
- The information needed today is different from the information needed tomorrow, next week or next month. Changes come from everywhere: internal strategy changes, competitive pressures, new regulatory requirements.
These points resonate with the strategies I hear enterprises want to pursue to innovate and remain competitive. Inforbix provides a means for enterprises to leverage semantic web technology to aggregate and fuse disparate data together. Back in June, I wrote about this, Inforbix and linking disparate data together using semantic technology. In my view, change doesn’t have to come with disruption. Rather, change can come in the form of enabling technology, such as semantic web, that can help transform and improve how enterprises work with their data. Aggregating, fusing, linking, and connecting disparate data together in meaningful and useful ways is an important step towards the kind of change that will help enterprises remain competitive.
Best, Oleg
