Informatica is actually ahead of its competitors in this regard and is about to leap even further ahead with Informatica 9 announcement. The idea of Self-Service integration is something that David and I wrote about in our ICC book in 2005. Informatica’s On-Demand offering is yet another example of a capability that has been available for years – it enables business users to design, build and deploy integration solutions (for business intelligence, data synchronization, or data migration) without ever talking to a software engineer.

Of course IT “experts” (system analysts, software engineers, data-base administrators, operations staff, etc.) still need to be involved – they are the ones that built the tools and are still working in the background to make sure they continue to operate efficiently. They may however not be a visible since the business users can serve themselves directly using tools like On-Demand. In short, IT in this context is acting as an enabler and catalyst.

while I share your conclusions and like the piece, in my recent experience the real question in terms of data integration, business intelligence and making smart use of existing information assets is:

Does IT still need to be involved?

And that is not a rethorical question at all! Many of Informatica’s competitors in the integration and BI space actually have started to put that blunt thesis to the test. Why can’t we look at IT as the enabler and catalyst but turn over the execution into the same hands that are held accountable for a company’s success or failure?

…read on at http://blog.anvalad.com

Rgds
-Tom

Nice article as always.

Of course, business needs to be involved. Existence of IT departments is because of “BUSINESS” and hence it is incumbent upon IT to understand what their role/responsibilities are as a service organization to the business. Avoiding any initiatives or projects where there is no clear sponsorship and participation from business is one way to start getting business involved.

One would think that with years of experience observing successful and failed IT projects, we as a community of professionals, would have learned that collaboration(across various parts of the organization) is key for any successful business initiative. It is really important to work as a team to maximize the returns on any investment made in projects/activities.

IT needs to clearly tie every single project/initiative into business goals. IT needs to have an agreement around perceived benefits from business before any project (MDM, Data Quality) or activity is undertaken. This agreement and buy in into initiatives will be evident by the extent to which business takes ownership and commits resources to the project.

Vish Agashe

Great post. My approach to strategic change management says the quality of the first five percent determines what happens in the rest of the process. This same principle applies to many situations….