A roadmap to enterprise data integration .

Abstract

Data integration in the enterprise Companies are generating an ever increasing amount of data, and studies show that uncontrolled data growth and data integration problems are slowing down the deployment of new applications. In a recent study by The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI),1 for example, 69 percent of the organizations surveyed said that data integration issues are a barrier to implementing new applications. The three main data integration concerns of survey respondents were data quality and security, lack of a business case and inadequate funding, and a poor data integration infrastructure. To help solve data integration problems companies are increasing their funding of data integration projects. In the Worldwide Data Integration Spending 2004-2008 Forecast report, IDC estimates data integration spending worldwide will increase from $9.3 billion in 2003 to $13.6 billion in 2008. For data integration to be successful, however, this funding must be used to solve data quality problems and to build an enterprise-wide data integration infrastructure. The objective of this report is to take a detailed look at how organizations can plan and build an enterprise infrastructure for supporting data integration applications. It will review current data integration techniques and technologies, and offer suggestions as to which of these could be used for any data integration application. It will also demonstrate how IBM’s data integration solution can be used to support an enterprise-wide data integration environment. Characteristics