Validating IT Information

Given the vast size of enterprise infrastructures, an MDR of strategic IT information will contain errors. To resolve discrepancies, the platform must be able to validate, audit and improve the quality and integrity of the information. The platform must be able to apply rules to enforce structure of the data (e.g. string, date, Boolean) and to validate the allowed values, identify conflicting updates, and manage out-of-date or stale information. 

Most importantly, the platform must enable the definition and enforcement of the policies regarding the accuracy, completeness and compliance of all the objects and their relationships. This policy enforcement must support the expression of complex descriptions of the relationships found in the enterprise. In addition, workflow in support of policy definition, application and compliance management must be provided.

Data may become out of date, reflecting components or relationships that are no longer existent. In order to address this state, the platform must support the implementation of business rules to manage this “stale” data.

All activity and changes to the data in an enterprise-class MDR must be tracked and auditable in terms of the specific change and the source responsible for each change.

Lastly, reports must be available to monitor and track the quality of the data in the MDR.

Administering & Securing IT Information

Because of the strategic importance, size, and complexity of the information in the MDR, the platform must be capable of ensuring appropriate security. To protect proprietary and strategic information, the platform must provide very fine granularity of access privileges to the information definition, creation, modification and viewing. Attributes must be subject to privilege management. Lastly, the platform must be able to support large-scale management of the MDR (e.g. “bulk” create, replace, update, delete, export).

IT Information Delivery

The objective of IT Information Delivery is to increase the value and use of IT information and to improve collaborative IT decision making. This is achieved by tailoring both the delivery mechanisms and the information itself to fit the role of the user, thus delivering BI for IT.

Delivery Mechanisms

The ideal mechanism for delivery of strategic IT information to large user populations is via the browser using portal technology. To ensure the widest possible audience and eliminate any client management, the delivery mechanism should not require any Java applets or ActiveX controls to be distributed to the user’s desktop. It is important to note that in addition, subject-matter expert users may require a high-function visual modeling and analytic capability solution.

Given the diversity of user roles and their needs, users need access to both interactive searches and complex reporting, which enables IT decision support. Finally, all information must be available for printing and export to the industry-standard formats including Adobe Acrobat (.pdf), Microsoft Excel (.xls), Microsoft Visio (.vsd), W3C Extended Markup Language (.xml), industry standard comma separated values (.csv) and W3C Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg).