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July 5, 2005
Eye on TDWI Baltimore May 2005
Nice Review of my Keynote Address at TDWI this year.
R. Todd Stephens kicked off the second keynote of the conference. He titled it, An Information Odyssey: The Future of Business Intelligence. I have heard several analysts and consultants talk about the future of BI in the past. They had focused on the challenges of really big data, real-time delivery, and outsourcing so I wasnt expecting much new. However, Stephens is the Director of Metadata Services for BellSouth. As somebody on the ground, he did bring an unique perspective to the subject.
Stephens started out by reviewing the work of other futurists. He quoted Peter Druckers Ages of Civilization which points out that the information age may be already drawing to a close and that we are on the brink of the age of knowledge. He then extended Druckers ideas to the BI/ data warehousing arena. Stephens suggested that the hub-and-spoke model and other current data warehousing architectures are artifacts of the information age. In the age of knowledge, such frameworks would give way to service oriented architectures. I thought about Sunday nights hospitality suite hosted by Informatica and Gary Reichers presentation on integration competency centers. Stephens had a good point.
Stephens then went on to confirm that integration is at the heart of a services oriented architecture. He suggested that integration will be needed for data as well as governance and various business and technical initiatives. He also saw BI as being embedded within the fabric of service oriented architectures. Like other futurists, Stephens saw technical jobs going to other economies. At home, successful BI workers will be knowledge workers.
Posted by Todd at July 5, 2005 2:39 PM