Monthly Archives: December 2010

Is MDM A Pipe Dream for the Average Organization?

With few exceptions, the most notable one being Oracle (which is the only IT organization I know of that eats its own premium dog food and never varies from the menu), MDM (Master Data Management) is a bigger myth in the modern enterprise than the Lost City of Atlantis (which never existed, by the way, and if you did your research you’d know it was a fictional metropolis introduced by Plato so that Socrates would have something to say). It’s been a problem ever since the first enterprise used one system for accounting and a second system for inventory, and it has only worsened over time. And now that we’re cloud-crazy, it’s only going to get even worse.

Instead of having data residing in dozens of databases accessed by dozens and dozens of applications in your server room, you’ll now have data residing in dozens of internal databases and in dozens of external databases on half a dozen different clouds, which is physically distributing and replicating these database instances over a few dozen instances for fault tolerance and reliability. Your data is now everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It’s more global than you are. And thanks to dynamic routing (and IP hacking and spoofing), it’s seamlessly crossing borders that you can’t. How can you ever hope to get a handle on it?

Well, according to this recent article in Information Week, you can start by following “three guidelines for implementing MDM”. These guidelines are a good way to wrap your mind around the problem, but they don’t really solve it.

Consider the guidelines:

  • Primary business drivers determine the methods of use.
    Well, duh! This should be the case for every system you use, not just MDM. If there is no business need, why do you have a system? Considering that all systems require hardware, software, and technical resources to maintain them, it’s just dumb to have systems you don’t need.
  • Data volatility determines the implementation styles.
    This is fairly obvious too. If you have a database that only updates once a week, and your MDM approach is to dump replicate all of your data in all of your disparate databases into one central database for MDM-driven BI, then you’re only going to have to update the central database once a week. If you have a database that updates every second, then you’ll need to grab updated data as often as you need it for analysis.
  • Scope determines the number of domains.
    This was the only really useful guideline. MDM doesn’t always mean centralizing all of the data into one central repository accessed through one domain. MDM is about gathering all of the related and relevant data into one schema, which may or may not be in one database, that permits the analyses the organization needs to run.

And now we get to the heart of the problem. Where and how should the data be stored, and how should it be accessed for the analytics that the MDM system is to support. (There’s no need for MDM if you’re not doing analytics!)

To this end, the article suggests you look at three types of MDM — Collaborative (CMDM), Operational (OMDM), and Analytical (AMDM) — and three styles — registry, coexistence, and transaction — but the first doesn’t solve the problem at all (as it just helps you figure out what you need to include under MDM, not how you represent it) and the second only deals with what data is managed and how often it is refreshed.

The fundamental problem is that of architecture — what is the schema, where is the data stored, and how is it federated? And what do you do if some of the data is not accessible when you need it? If you have terabytes of data distributed between internal databases and external clouds, then to centralize it you will need terabytes of storage and some big internet pipes to handle the petabytes of data that will need to be sent back and forth over the course of a year to keep the central data store up to date. So centralization is not the answer in this scenario. You need to keep the data in its home location and simply access what you need when you need it. But if an application is down, or inaccessible because of a temporary internet-related failure, the data won’t be accessible. So what do you do? Do you run the analysis without that data? Do you use the most recently cached data? Do you estimate the missing data based on time-series projections? Do you run a partial analysis, return a partial report, queue the remainder of the request and then run the remaining analysis when the data source becomes available again? Until you can answer these questions, architect a distributed, fault-tolerant, robust MDM solution, and implement it — which is where even the best organizations tend to fail and give up before the effort is complete — you don’t have MDM.

So is MDM a pipe dream for the average organization? Or will next generation technology deliver us a solution. It’s an important question, because you’ll never have true BI (Business Intelligence) if your data is out of control.

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The Three Best Habits of Highly Successful SME Supply Chains

A recent article in Canadian Manufacturing on “the seven habits of highly successful SME supply chains” had three great habits that all supply chains should follow:

  • Long-Term Approach
    As the article points out, identifying overseas export markets and establishing supply chain partners in those markets can be a time-consuming and costly endeavour. As a result, it’s important to take a long term view when identifying overseas markets and selecting supply chain partners in those markets as you won’t be able to make a quick change if you make a mistake.
  • Inventory Intelligence
    In a downturn, it’s easy to get stuck with excess inventory that will have to be sold at a loss, if you’re lucky, or written off entirely, if you’re not. Also, in an upturn, it’s easy to sell-out and lose sales to a competitor with a similar product. In both cases, poor inventory management can cost your company a lot of money. Inventory needs to be based on real demand, which comes from demand signals. That’s why you need to take the leap of faith and tie into retailer PoS systems for current demand signals.
  • Cultural Cleverness
    It’s not just SMEs in Canada who have been vexed by unanticipated strains in relations and delays due to miscommunication sparked by cultural differences. That’s why this blog ran two series, edited by Dick Locke, on Overcoming Cultural Differences in International Trade and Cultural Intelligence. Before you work with a different culture, better get some cultural training.

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Keeping Your Industrial Control System Secure

Recently, the evil hackers have stepped up their assault with the design of viruses designed specifically to attack and exploit industrial control systems, including the Stuxnet worm specifically written to attack Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, and, according to reports, Siemens control systems in particular.

As a result, you need to step up your efforts to secure your systems. How do you go about it? Start with the advice in this recent article in Industry Week that gives you “five keys to keep your industrial control system secure”.

  • Develop Security Awareness
    Viruses don’t just come from the internet. They also come from flash & USB drives that were infected on another computer. Be sure to install end-to-end anti-virus solutions and only copy / run new software after it has been scanned and determined to be virus free.
  • Do a Risk Assessment
    Determine the risk posed by each organizational system and lock it down appropriately. Mission critical systems or systems that control dangerous process or use dangerous materials should be locked down, and, if at all possible, taken completely off the internet.
  • Find the Legacy Systems
    Some of these systems might be so old that they are no longer supported. As a result, they’ll be especially vulnerable to new exploits as there will be no future patches to plug the holes and newer AV products will not support the legacy systems.
  • Triple Lock-down the Wireless Networks
    Now that Blackberries, iPhones, and Android devices can be used to control your network, the last thing you want is an open network that anyone with the right software and a mobile smartphone can use to log in locally and take control.
  • Communicate
    Talk to the IT people and keep abreast of the emerging security issues and have a plan to deal with them before they have their way with you.

Then do the following:

  • Lock down any output/display-only devices tighter than Fort Knox.
    Disable the USB / external drives, prevent installation of unauthorized programs downloaded over the internet, and make sure the approved anti-virus/anti-spyware programs can’t be disabled. It won’t prevent every threat, but it will prevent known threats from getting in and making more holes that other threats could exploit.
  • Do a regular security audit at least quarterly.
    You can’t just update your anti-virus programs once a year and assume everything is A-OK. Every install, every update, every new machine and new device is a risk. While you don’t need to go psycho and lock everything down and run a level 5 security threat assessment every week, you should run a basic set of scans and penetration tests once a quarter to make sure you or your staff haven’t inadvertently opened the back door wide open.

 

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Another Headline From the Land of D’OH: Going Global Means Expecting the Unexpected

I have to say that I never expected our next headline from the land of D’oh! to come from Knowledge@Wharton, but I guess that this is just more proof that the unexpected can happen when you go global! But seriously, who didn’t know this? It’s 2010, and everyone knows that every country is different. Different cultures. Different political systems. Different goals. And no matter how much you think you know about another culture or country from reading a book or taking a course, there’s always going to be something you don’t know. After all, there’s lots about your own country you don’t know. For example, for those of you in the US, how many titles in the US code and which ones would impact you if you changed your product line?

And now that national security is becoming a prominent issue in many countries, it only stands to reason that the complexity of doing international business is only going to increase, and that the unexpected is going to become more common. This is especially true in information technology, as information can have political ramifications, and telecommunications, which transmit information, as these are both high-growth industries and there’s a lot of money at stake.

Furthermore, when companies offer products or services that can be used for, or to compromise, national security, there’s a chance there’s a good chance that it can put them in conflict with local governments. So what should they do? According to the article, these companies should put crisis management in place. Because a crisis is almost as inevitable as a supply chain disruption, and we all know that the black swan is coming.

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To Survive in Electronics Manufacturing, You Need to Start 3R Design Now

The 2nd generation iPads are about to hit the shelves. The Android pads are coming. Blackberry’s PlayBook is almost here. And everyone and his dog are buying smartphones these days. This sounds great until you realize that this means that lots of people are going to be discarding their old phones and netbooks, of which only 10% are recycled each year (according to the EPA, as discussed in this Brighthand article that asks “why cell phone recycling rates [are] so low”).

And to make matters worse, lifecycles for these types of consumer electronics are growing shorter every month. People used to keep their phones for years. The current life-span is now estimated by most analysts to be between 18 and 24 months and some people are trading their phones in every year. When you consider that the average person now owns one or more computers, laptops, cell-phones, portable media players, GPS systems, etc., and that some estimates place the number of electronic devices per consumer as high as 10, you see a dangerous situation emerging. Adding the numbers up, we see that it won’t be long before there are 3 Billion consumer electronic devices being disposed of each year, with only 300 Million being recycled if current trends continue.

We’re at the point where we have to go beyond the standard reduce, reuse, recycle mantra that has been chanted for years, and design for recycle, as this blog first suggested to you three years ago. In addition, with certain natural resources becoming scarce, you also need to design for reduced resource utilization and reuse. Especially since many of these electronic devices still contain hazardous materials.

If design for recycle is done right, there will be a refurbishment phase which will allow for reuse as long as the device has a usable life. This has many benefits for manufacturers and retailers as the cost of refurbishment for phones, pads, and laptops can often be much less the cost of producing a new device (especially when the cost of energy is factored in as it takes huge amounts of energy to create these devices, but very little to have a human pop out a single defective component and pop in a new one). Plus, the market for refurbished devices is about to boom as there are millions of people in emerging countries who will be ready for smartphones when the next generation of mobile devices comes out in addition to millions of people in the developed world who have yet to switch to smartphones and pads.

Plus, with the cost of raw materials increasing as fast as energy, and the looming threat of end-of-life directives that would force all producers of electronics components to take their disposed products back, design for recycle just makes sense. Reducing raw materials and energy requirements will save a lot of money. Designing phones so that as many components as possible can be reused when the phone can no longer be refurbished reduces future production costs and waste. And minimizing or, better yet, completely eliminating hazardous materials can simplify and increase the effectiveness of recycling. All-in-all, designing for eventual recycling will not only save money and increase profits, but might be the only way an electronics manufacturer can survive in this tough economy if more regulations hit the industry.