Data | Enterprise Architecture in Higher Education

Business Analytics Anyone?

enterprise architecture, higher education, strategic planning No Responses »

Jan 112012

Today, I participated in a focus group to help start up the BCIT School of Business Business Analytics Centre of Excellence. The room was full of Business Intelligence/Analytics/Insight leaders from around Vancouver. We were brought together by Ed Bosman and Karen Plesner both instructors in the BCIT School of Business. Karen facilitated a two hour discussion on a series of topics. The group provided advice on the skills expected of graduates in the various business analytic roles – consumers, artisans/analysts and systems technicians. The other major focus was on what a “centre of excellence” for business analytics should provide and deliver to industry.

We were provided with a definition of Business Analytics as the seed for the discussion:

Business Analytics: the skills, technologies, applications and practices for continuous iterative exploration and investigation of past business performance to gain insight and drive business planning (Davenport and Harris, 2007)

This definition generated a very good discussion and the consensus was that this definition was too narrow. It failed to address real-time analytics for operational performance management and web analytics for customer behaviour management.

We had a good discussion about master data management and data standards. One of the great quotes of the day came from an panel member. He was referring to a discussion about how confident and accurate your numbers need to be. I really like this pragmatic approach.

Business Analytics augments your gut

The another panel member introduced the group to a model used by Davenport and Harris. Here is what it looks like:

Davenport and Harris Model	Information	Insight
Past
Present
Future

The model is a measure of where business analytics efforts are focused. This would be a good model for us to look at the maturity of our Business Intelligence/Analytics practices.

This table contains the lists of topics and themes I noted during our focus group. There are many topics and themes below that will warrant future blog posts.

Trends	Tools	BI/BA Type	Audience
Web Analytics	Excel	Operational “Real time”	Consumers
Mobile	Access	Tactical “Just in Time”	Artisans
Bring Your Own Device	Qlikview	Strategic “Points in Time”	Analysts
Security	Tableau	Compliance	Authors
Privacy	SAP	Predictive	Systems Technicians
Predictive	IBM Cognos
MDM	MS Analysis Services
Big Data	SAS
Information Overload	SPSS

I am looking forward to the next steps in the process and hope to contribute to the effort.

Davenport, Thomas H.; Harris, Jeanne G. (2007). Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning. Harvard Business School Press

Microsoft Canadian Colleges Exec Briefing – Data Sovereignty

enterprise architecture, higher education, it governance No Responses »

Feb 022011

John Weigelt, National Technology Officer, Microsoft Canada

Data Sovereignty and Privacy

John’s job is to avoid “those unintended consequences” around technology adoption.

Discussion about what constitutes cloud computing especially being clear about the context. SaaS, PaaS and IaaS all have different contexts and require different approaches when considering data security and privacy.

Microsoft Infrastructure Investment – data centres in North and South Central USA, North and Western Europe, East and South East Asia.

There will no plans by Microsoft to build a Canadian data centre.

There is no economics especially customer base and scaling, higher levels of legal “friction”, and not a viable cost model for Microsoft.

Common Questions about Cloud Computing

uncertainty
human resources
governance
security
privacy
interoperability

The Challenge

Law – BC legislation obliges their government entities to maintain personal info in Canada. Nova Scotia has similar legislation but allows DM to authorize international data transfers

Data Sovereignty

US Patriot Act - mis-perceptions with the business community regarding the US Patriot Act and how the lack of clarity surrounding this piece of legislation has resulted in lost opportunities. Fred Cate “there is a vanishingly small chance” that the exercise of the Patriot Act can actually be used. Also look at David Fraser (http://privacylawyer.ca) for an analysis of the national privacy laws.

Security & Compliance Program

Take a layered approach – Microsoft implemented the “Trustworthy Computing” initiative in 2002 for all their software.

security management
data
user
application
host
internal network
network perimeter
facility

Microsoft is the #2 most attacked entity after the US Department of Defense on the Internet. Microsoft as a strong commitment to meeting security standards and is regularly independently audited based on these standards. There is support for the full continuum of private, hybrid and public cloud services.

Call to Action

hone your skills
understand the service expectations for the services you currently provide
seek opportunities to leverage cloud services
engage in the conversations with your compliance authorities

Corporate Information … single source or single search?

enterprise architecture No Responses »

Jun 032009

Recently, we have been talking about creating a single repository for IT Services departmental information. The idea being that our team members need to go to one place to get the information they are looking for. Instead of wasting time looking at multiple repositories each with their own taxonomies, UX and search features, put it all in one place with one UX and taxonomy.

Today, my thinking took a 180 degree turn with a vendor presentation on “enterprise search“. Instead of making people conform to rigid rules about where to put information, what if we gave them a tool to find the data wherever it resides behind our firewalls? Like someone said today, “Google search for our stuff”

No some of you might say, not taking time to architect an information repository and relying on a search engine is the lazy way out. I have some thoughts that I hope will make you think otherwise. When presented with business challenges, I find it is rarely the technology that is the problem. Instead, it is the ease of use for our clients, customers and stakeholders that should be considered. Enforcing compliance is expensive and in many cases ineffective. What if we made it easy for people to comply? Educate them on some simple tagging and then let them work like they always have. The difference is giving them a tool to search for what they need and work to tune that tool so that we see a significant reduction is costly “Search and not find” scenarios.

I will now begin some research on enterprise search and report back later. Have any of you implemented an enterprise search capability? What do you use?

Here are some links:

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.