Thursday, July 17, 2008

Data Aggregation Market Grows

I’m a huge fan of the growing data aggregation/business intelligence sector associated with levels 2 and 3 of the S95 model. Those who know me have heard me preach about the benefits of a federated data model – let the data reside where it was collected, but aggregate many sources for visualization.

There are several players in this market, and just when you thought you had if figured out, Rockwell buys Incuity - what is this going to mean?

And what’s the deal with the whole concept of data ownership as it relates to where the data is stored? I think this is one of the biggest rifts between industrial and business IT departments. They're hard drives, not safes. These organizations need to be the caretakers of the data, not the information police.

And data replication into other stores has always been a hot topic with me – how do you avoid the “two versions of the truth” syndrome?

So I’m cautiously excited about a new product from OSI called AF. I’ve only seen the product data sheet this week, and further investigation is needed, but it appears to be a tool for aggregation and analysis without data replication. OSI uses a very interesting term in their write up – data agnostic. Now a Google search of data agnostic produces a variety of hits from different disciplines, but my take on it is OSI’s attempt at a federated data model.