In a series of blog posts we would like to examine, how the enormous amounts of data that are available to us today can be put into a context with IT thanks to Enterprise Architecture (EA). In this first post we will introduce the subject, in a series of further articles we will explore a case study, in which real-time metrics allow for better business decisions, five use cases for real-time metrics and how you can get started with real-time metrics and iterate quickly.
"There was 5 exabytes of information created from the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every two days."
This 2010 quote by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt indicates the increased significance of data and information, which continues to grow. Modern IT organizations are at the center of this development. An immense number of expert tools generate a waterfall of data from the fields of development, operations and business.
The real task is to use this data in a meaningful way. As the challenges that IT organizations are facing are substantial. They can no longer limit themselves to simply keeping operations running. Internet giants such as Amazon, Apple, Google or Facebook spoil their customers with user-friendly services and products and have thus raised the bar high for all other companies in the digital age. The concept of big data represents a possible solution in this area—using data to gain a better understanding of the end-user in order to make better decisions. However, the results were often sobering. Dynamics and complexity in the application environment fueled by cloud computing and API transformed the usually vast information initiatives into a nightmare of complexity. As a result, silos of information sources without any real business reference are produced which are hardly useful for making decisions.
Enterprise Architecture (EA) is the discipline which generates precisely this business reference for IT-generated data. In the past, however, the statistical and often too abstracting nature of the results made them barely usable. The consolidation of Enterprise Architecture methods and real-time metrics thus offers a large opportunity to solve both specified sets of problems: placing data into the right context and bringing EA initiatives closer to the pulse of digital transformation.
In LeanIX's next article we will be looking at a renowned insurance company that was able to make better business decisions for the digital age due to real-time metrics.