IT Nirvana

Over the last few posts I have raised the unfulfilled concept that was prevalent in the early days of Open Systems - namely the Corporate or Enterprise Database. This concept was where corporate data would be stored and accessed centrally from a central managed place. Of course the central database never happened and there are lots of reasons for this, but I like to think of the Corporate Database as a kind of IT Nirvana. Twenty years ago if we could show IT managers what their systems landscapes would look like today I think this idea may have taken off and just possibly we could have a achieved that blissful IT state.

Instead we face the following issues:

- Systems complexity - get your local IT architect to print out your current systems landscape. Even better get him to walk through all your interfaces.
- Data Warehouses - Often the holy grail of the data warehouse is the search for a single view of the truth. This is because your multiple systems will all have different versions. If the data was kept in one place then we wouldn't need to build expensive and complex data warehouses.
- Master Data Management - The Corporate Database is the MD solution
- Enterprise Data Bus - Why would we need a bus if all the data sits in the same location?

So are we likely to find spiritual enlightenment in IT soon? Well not so long as we can't see past the next quarter, or FY budget for that matter.