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Break Down Data Silos With Data Integration
Integrate your data or disintegrate your business.
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Contributors
- Wayne Regier, Director of Data Management, Husky Injection Molding
- Jason Bloomberg, President, Intellyx
- Hamdan Ahmad, Principal Consultant, Slalom Consulting
- Sanjay Pande, Co-Founder and Instructor, Learn Data Vault
- Anonymous Contributors
Your Challenge
- As organizations process more information at faster rates, there is increased pressure for faster and more efficient data integration.
- Data integration is becoming more and more critical for downstream functions of data management and for business operations to be successful. Poor integration holds back these critical functions.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Every IT project requires data integration. Regardless of the current problem and the solution being implemented, any change in the application and database ecosystem requires you to solve a data integration problem.
- Data integration problem solving needs to start with business activity. After understanding the business activity, move to application and system integration to drive the optimal data integration activities.
- Data integration improvement needs to be backed by solid requirements that depend on the use case. Info-Tech’s use cases will help you identify your organization’s requirements and integration architecture for its ideal data integration solution.
Impact and Result
- Create a data integration solution that supports the flow of data through the organization and meets the organization’s requirements for data latency, availability, and relevancy.
- Build your data integration practice with a firm foundation in governance and reference architecture; use best-fit reference architecture patterns and the related technology and resources to ensure that your process is scalable and sustainable.
- The business’ uses of data are constantly changing and evolving, and as a result, the integration processes that ensure data availability must be frequently reviewed and repositioned in order to continue to grow with the business.
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why your organization should improve its data integration, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand how we can help you create a loosely coupled integration architecture.
1. Collect data integration requirements
Identify data integration pains and needs and use them to collect effective business requirements for the integration solution.
2. Analyze data integration requirements
Determine technical requirements for the integration solution based on the business requirement inputs.
3. Design the data integration solution
Determine your need for a data integration proof of concept, and then design the data model for your integration solution.
4. Build the data integration solution
Create a plan for putting the integrations into action.
Guided Implementations
This guided implementation is a nine call advisory process.
Guided Implementation #1 - Collect data integration requirements
Call #1 - Learn about the concepts of data integration and the common integration use cases.
Call #2 - Understand what drives the business to need improved data integration, and how to collect integration requirements.
Guided Implementation #2 - Analyze data integration requirements
Call #1 - Determine the technical requirements for the integration solution.
Call #2 - Learn about and understand the differences between trends in data integration, as well as how they can benefit your organization.
Call #3 - Determine your ideal integration pattern.
Guided Implementation #3 - Design the data integration solution
Call #1 - Start with a POC to validate your integration design.
Call #2 - Learn about the source to target mapping tool, and how to create your own.
Call #3 - Learn about integration metadata and what metadata to capture.
Guided Implementation #4 - Build the data integration solution
Call #1 - Learn how to build your integration solution based on best practices.
Book Your Workshop
Onsite workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Collect Data Integration Requirements
The Purpose
- Explain approach and value proposition.
- Review the common business drivers and how the organization is driving a need to optimize data integration.
- Understand Info-Tech’s approach to data integration.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Current integration architecture is understood.
- Priorities for tactical initiatives in the data architecture practice related to integration are identified.
- Target state for data integration is defined.
Activities
Outputs
Discuss the current data integration environment and the pains that are felt by the business and IT.
Determine what the problem statement and business case look like to kick-start a data integration improvement initiative.
Understand data integration requirements from the business.
- Data Integration Requirements Gathering Tool
Module 2: Collect Data Integration Requirements
The Purpose
- Understand what the business requires from the integration solution.
- Identify the common technical requirements and how they relate to business requirements.
- Review the trends in data integration to take advantage of new technologies.
- Brainstorm how the data integration trends can fit within your environment.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Business-aligned requirements gathered for the integration solution.
Activities
Outputs
Understand what the business requires from the integration solution.
- Data Integration Requirements Gathering Tool
Identify the common technical requirements and how they relate to business requirements.
- Data Integration Trends Presentation
Module 3: Analyze Data Integration Requirements
The Purpose
- Learn about the various integration patterns that support organizations’ data integration architecture.
- Determine the pattern that best fits within your environment.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Improvement initiatives are defined.
- Improvement initiatives are evaluated and prioritized to develop an improvement strategy.
- A roadmap is defined to depict when and how to tackle the improvement initiatives.
Activities
Outputs
Learn about the various integration patterns that support organizations’ data integration architecture.
- Integration Reference Architecture Patterns
- Data Integration POC Template
Determine the pattern that best fits within your environment.
- Data Integration Mapping Tool
Module 4: Create Your Solution’s Source to Target Data Model
The Purpose
- Determine if a POC approach is required for the environment.
- Document the business activities, sources and targets of your new integration solution.
- Identify the types of transformations required.
- Identify the metadata that should be captured.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Improvement initiatives are defined.
- Improvement initiatives are evaluated and prioritized to develop an improvement strategy.
- A roadmap is defined to depict when and how to tackle the improvement initiatives.
Activities
Outputs
Determine if a POC approach is required for the environment.
Document the business activities, sources and targets of your new integration solution.
Identify the types of transformations required.
Identify the metadata that should be captured.
- Data Integration Mapping Tool
