Getting Data to Applications: Why We Fail and How We Can Do Better(Part 1)

To enable better business processes and reduce duplicate data collection, our customers need to share their data more widely, both within and between their organizations. To do this, many initiatives have pursued a grand vision of "transparent access"-making all data available to all consumers (users and applications) in a way each consumer can interpret anywhere and at any time. The lack of success is often blamed on a lack of commitment and resources, but we suspect that doubling the budget would probably lead to a failure twice as costly. The deeper reasons lie in fallacious assumptions (often unconscious) on the part of the builders and their management. In the this two part series, we examine some of these faulty assumptions, how they can lead to failure, and how we can do better.