Sharing is Good: Pass it OnPrivacy regulation could proscribe the boundaries of data and application integrationIntegration: Perhaps no other word can inspire as much uncertainty, hope, and fear — and yet still cause eyes to glaze over from the hypnotic incantation of acronyms. Surveys of chief information officers rank integration at or near the top of the list of current hot buttons, although chances are they'd just as soon give someone else the responsibility for knowing all the intimate technical details. CRM, supply chain management, and other business-critical software applications stall miserably when confronted with poor data and process integration. Costs rise and return on investment shrinks. And without enterprise integration, business performance forecasting remains based more on the wizardry of individual managers than on facts accepted by all. Vendors are listening: Most of the majors beckon customers toward a future in which Web services link data and processes seamlessly over the Internet. In this vision, integration difficulties disappear into the cloud — and for those that don't, service specialists can take care of it, at your place or theirs. Evolving standards are supposed to level the playing field — and let customers continue with a heterogeneous portfolio of vendors' applications. As more and more unstructured data sources, documents, multimedia systems, and legacy applications become part of the mix, standards will face significant challenges. The integration monster will only change shape and grow. For citizens of the world, integration, in the form of data sharing, is not the subject of rosy visions. Little effort has been made to sell the benefits to the public, which sees data sharing as a violation of privacy and an enabler of even more persistent and personalized marketing. Profiling — which statisticians and data miners might consider a supreme application of their knowledge and skill — is for an increasing number of consumers and activists the conspiratorial instrument that will enable a global cabal of big businesses to determine who gets which mortgages, car loans, and other products and services. Even worse, many fear that profiling information will find its way into the decision making that determines who gets which jobs, healthcare, visas, and more. Eyes on CaliforniaAll summer, lobbyists, activists, and politicians have been battling over SB773, a bill sponsored by California State Senator Jackie Speier (Democrat, Hillsborough) that's designed to give "customers more control over the personal details collected by financial companies on mortgage, credit card, and insurance customers," according to the San Francisco Chronicle (Aug. 27, 2002). By the time you read this, legislators may have determined the outcome of SB773, which is only the latest of several attempts to regulate data sharing in California. If it fails, there will no doubt be a successor effort. The bill, which would go beyond current federal laws to require explicit permission from customers before financial, credit, and insurance institutions could sell personal data about them, has drawn intense lobbying. The Chronicle reported that $4.7 million in campaign donations have passed from financial companies opposed to the bill to California Governor Gray Davis and other leading state lawmakers. The Financial Services Privacy Coalition, "an amalgam of financial services industry trade groups that have heavily opposed consumer privacy measures over the years," even took the battle to the public in a series of newspaper advertising spots targeted at the constituencies of legislators known to be "wavering on the issue." Although legislative give-and-take has fashioned a respectable bill more palatable to business interests, the California Chamber of Commerce and other associations have remained opposed, fearing a "burdensome layer of bureaucracy for companies, driving up costs without providing any benefit to consumers." Alas, businesses haven't effectively made the case for why the unfettered data sharing they desire does in fact benefit consumers. Business and IT leaders might doubt the abilities of software and system vendors to bring the Web services and data sharing dreamscape into reality: but they don't disagree with the need for an integration Nirvana. Unfortunately, such accepted wisdom hasn't made it out to consumers, privacy activists, and politicians. In an atmosphere in which corporate officials are being led away in handcuffs, perhaps consumers can be forgiven for harboring doubts about what businesses can do with their most personal information. Real-Time EnterpriseConsumers aren't alone with their concerns; data ownership, privacy, data quality, and business process ownership issues can slow down enterprise business integration. All organizations are mired in internal rivalries, particularly in the aftermath of mergers and acquisitions. Tough economic times can put divisions and lines of business in a defensive posture when approached about sharing their data, information, and knowledge. By setting broad, strategic agendas focused on raising efficiency, driving down costs, and uncovering opportunities for revenue and profit, business and IT leaders can highlight the necessity for employees to break from the past and embrace integration. "Real-time enterprise" is one such big-picture agenda that's garnering interest in business and IT circles. The big idea is to use Internet technology to break down barriers between applications, and, thereby, speed up business processes. Reporting, forecasting, and other data analysis would benefit from timely, universal visibility into performance. Decision makers could then drive software and service initiatives to build intelligence into business processes for greater automation and efficiency. Although hardly alone, PeopleSoft has taken the mind share lead. The company's latest release of Application Connect (AppConnect) pulls together its application and data integration technology to become a middleware platform to support vertical and functional software applications. Through standards support, PeopleSoft is trying to draw a distinction between itself and its primary rivals — Oracle and SAP AG — by fully embracing heterogeneity. IBM, leading with its DB2 data management and Websphere application middleware products, is aiming to become the top open integration infrastructure provider, offering greater depth and breadth than such rivals as Sun Microsystems and Microsoft. However, unless the business community can make a better case — or perhaps a better deal — with consumers, privacy regulation may confine Web services and heterogeneous integration to a far more restrictive set of business processes. David Stodder [dstodder@cmp.com] is editorial director of Intelligent Enterprise.
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