Data Modeling in a Coordinated

Data Management Environment:

The Key to Business Agility in
the Era of Evolving Data
An ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES (EMA) White Paper
Prepared for CA ERwin
November 2013

IT & DATA MANAGEMENT RESEARCH,

INDUSTRY ANALYSIS & CONSULTING

Data Modeling in a Coordinated Data Management Environment:

The Key to Business Agility in the Era of Evolving Data
Table of Contents
Business Agility.................................................................................................................................. 1
Business Agility with Coordinated Data Management...................................................................... 2
Technical Drivers of Centralized Data Management......................................................................... 3
Different Structures...................................................................................................................... 4
Increasing Importance of Data in Business .................................................................................. 5
Significance of Collaboration............................................................................................................. 6
To Improve is to Change............................................................................................................... 6
EMA Perspective................................................................................................................................ 7

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Data Modeling in a Coordinated Data Management Environment:

The Key to Business Agility in the Era of Evolving Data
The world of data management is evolving. In the past, data management
consisted of well-groomed data ingested into structured databases
consistent with operational support or prescribed analytical data models.
Online applications and social media have changed the concept of speed
of delivery for data and have introduced new users, including business and
non-technical users who are interested in data. Mobile apps and connective
devices altered the notions of how data is collected and transmitted. GPS,
sensor and other types of machine-to-machine data sources disrupted the
perception of what data should or could look like. Moreover, with cloud
infrastructure implementation timeframes measured in weeks, not months,
both business and Information Technology (IT) stakeholders have changed
the way they think about data management projects, and in particular how
data models and business and technical metadata are addressed.

Online applications and

social media have changed
the concept of speed of
delivery for data and have
introduced new users,
including business and
non-technical users who
are interested in data.

With all of these unsettling forces, little attention has been paid to the best way to manage the
correlation of these new data structures into integrated business and technical descriptions. These
connections between technical and business domains are critical to pull various data structures together
into operational systems or analytical platforms and share them across platforms and business units in
a timely and efficient fashion. Correlation between various data structures and definitions also enables
additional data management activities such as data governance and data quality that lead to improved
confidence of those integrated business views of a companys data.

Business Agility

Speed, flexibility and dexterity are all components of a concept that many refer to as business agility
the facility to react quickly to changes in business climate as well as evolving technical developments.
Business Agility enables organizations to build or extend their competitive edge over their rivals. The
proliferation of disruptive new data sources and the use of siloed design techniques for managing the
information about data sources (e.g. metadata) will quickly hamstring any organization from acting
nimbly. That is unless they have a robust data management process in place that can account for these
new forces and turn them into a competitive advantage.
Often with the advent of new technologies, more traditional documentation is seen as unnecessary
overhead. On the contrary, a set of enterprise-wide definitions of business concepts such as Customer,
Product, Employee, Revenue and Loss is more important than ever. Improving how existing data source
metadata is documented and new sources are integrated allows both business and IT stakeholders to
have the visibility and access required to make rapid decisions. A new way of managing business and
technical definitions, existing and new data models, and sharing that metadata information throughout
an organization is essential to this process.
If new data platform technical descriptions are mapped to centralized business definitions as each one
is introduced into an existing environment, time to implementation for those systems is reduced. With
maps to centralized business definitions, modification to downstream applications such as analytical
reporting platforms and operational systems is easier. This concept is based on having a single set of
definitions and in a single repository. Establishment of a coordinated environment for the management
of data models and metadata facilitates Business Agility in an organization.

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Data Modeling in a Coordinated Data Management Environment:

The Key to Business Agility in the Era of Evolving Data
Business Agility with Coordinated Data Management

In the early days of data management maturity, projects were implemented using siloed development
paradigms internally by IT teams. Rudimentary data models based on technical metadata and
department specific business definitions were documented with standalone methodologies using siloed
documentation products or database specific design tools that locked information on a single laptop or
a single database server. This paradigm was well designed in terms of technical database design, but not
much else. Inputs in terms of data models and other metadata were based on technical platform type.
Outputs in terms of documentation and coordination were manual based on one-on-one meetings and
emailing of documents.
As data management practices matured, centralized data modeling repositories were developed.
Technical metadata from one or more database platforms was integrated with business definitions.
Business stakeholders had access to technical details of model metadata. Members of IT teams had
visibility into business metadata across departments. Both teams typically were required to access
these environments via desktop application. Also, centralized repository users often needed specialized
knowledge to understand both technical and business aspects. These new centralized repositories
dramatically improved the correlation of metadata inputs into a single environment. Communication
outputs were still a manual and relatively asynchronous affair.
As we approach an era of expanded requirements on data management practices brought on by
disruptive, non-relational datasets, the opportunity for a truly coordinated data management
environment for metadata and data models is now available. This
environment capitalizes on the development and maturity of collaborative
tools to bring bi-directional communication between business and
The opportunity for a
technical stakeholders and close the loop between these two groups. A
truly coordinated data
Coordinated Data Management Environment (CDME) automatically
management environment
maintains links between business and technical metadata definitions
for metadata and data
stored within a modern data model. It is a nimble repository based on
models is now available.
the following information:
Description of business definitions common across departments.
Definition of structured/relational data models, whether they are operational systems (e.g. customer
care, point of sale or billing, analytical platforms (e.g. data visualization, reporting or advanced
analytics) or data integration tools (e.g. extract, transform and load ETL).
Mapping of new datasets from relational (e.g. acquired inventory control system or new customer
relationship management platform) or multi-structured sources (e.g. sensor log repository or social
media environment) to the existing definitions in operational or analytical systems.
Collaborative communication layer to coordinate efforts between disparate stakeholders.
Flexible output formats for search and export to enable distribution of information and designs.
This coordination supports the type of Business Agility required in modern organizations. As with
centralized repositories, business teams input the semantic designations. IT teams input technical
definitions. However, both business and IT can see changes of the other because their independent
work is guided by the CDME and presented as appropriate to the reader. Business stakeholders
look at the metadata across multiple systems and platform types to dynamically assist with integration
designs and implementation choices. Technical stakeholders can see the semantic definitions of such
core concepts as Customer, Product and Employee across multiple departments. From this view,
determinations can be made on how new data sources and platforms can complement existing data
models, or require net-new definitions.
2

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Data Modeling in a Coordinated Data Management Environment:

The Key to Business Agility in the Era of Evolving Data
In terms of outputs, a CDME establishes an environment where both technical and business stakeholders
can find a common source of metadata and share that information. Business analysts can search for terms
across many different platforms and share that information with colleagues. Technical implementers
can export existing model information and technical details to kick start future implementations or
standardize existing data models. In both cases, this allows for disparate teams across multiple locations
to share and access information automatically without using ad-hoc and manual processes.

Technical Drivers of Centralized Data Management

A decade ago, there were a limited number of data management platforms. Today, there is a wider set
of options. A Coordinated Data Management Environment is critical to the enablement of Business
Agility of this larger environment. Operational Systems, whether based on mainframe data stores or
relational databases, were on one side. Analytical platforms based on Data Warehouse or Data Mart
structure were on the other side. Recently, additional options have emerged. Analytical Appliances
now speed the processing and implementation of analytical processing. Cloud-based Platforms speed
time to implementation. Hadoop and other NoSQL Platforms emerged because there was a need to
process the datasets that traditional platforms could not process or were prohibitively priced to do so.
Finally, Data Discovery platforms now bridge the gap between the SQL data platforms and NoSQL
platforms. Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) has defined this collection of platform choices as
the Hybrid Data Ecosystem (HDE).

Line of Business
Executives

AL ANALYT
RATION
ICS
OPE
Business
Analysts

BI
Analysts

Data Mart (DM)

TION MANAGE
ME
RMA
NT
FO
N
I

Discovery
Platform

ANALYTICS

LOAD
STRUCTURE

ECONOMICS

REQUIREMENTS
COMPLEX
WORKLOAD

RESPONSE

Analytical
Platform
(ADBMS)

ONAL PROCES
SIN
ATI
ER
G
OP

Enterprise Data
Warehouse (EDW)

Cloud Data

DA
Data
Scientists

Hadoop

N
TA IN
T EG R A T I O

SQL

External
Users

Operational
Systems

NoSQL

EXPLORATION

Developers

IT Analysts

Figure 1: Enterprise Management Associates Hybrid Data Ecosystem

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Data Modeling in a Coordinated Data Management Environment:

The Key to Business Agility in the Era of Evolving Data
EMA research has discovered that the use of structured data schemas is still an important aspect of
modern technical environments. When survey respondents were asked which data structure(s) were
used in their data management environments, the majority indicated that they are using relational,
pre-defined schemas:
Schematic (structure set by predefined schema
e.g. relational)

24%

Programmatic (structure defined by programsapplications creating the data)

22%

Compound (XML)

18%

Multiplex (Image-audio, Video)

18%

Textual Data (Documents, JSON)

16%

Other (Please Specify)

2%
0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

Figure 2: Schemas used in data management environments

The preference for structured data schemas comes from the fact that to be effective many business
challenges still require a relational model. These challenges include descriptive analytics associated with
standard reporting, and normalized models connected to operational systems. Over 60% of the HDE
platforms implement some form of traditional structured data schema. Operational Systems, Data
Warehouses, Data Marts, Analytical Appliances, and many Cloud-Based Platforms implement
on structured datasets based on Boyce-Codd Normal forms popular with operational platforms or
denormalized structures important to analytical platforms. It is important for organizations to integrate
and map new data sources to traditional relational data schemas that are central to the organizations
processes and applications.

Over 60% of the HDE platforms

implement some form of
traditional structured data schema.
Different Structures

With new HDE platform types comes the need to manage a new set of data structures. Often these
structures are referred to as unstructured because there usually is a human-generated content element
within free form areas. Often these unstructured areas are contained within a larger structure on an
application or other business document and should be characterized as multi-structured. Multistructured data formats can have issues with access methods such as standard query languages like SQL.

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Data Modeling in a Coordinated Data Management Environment:

The Key to Business Agility in the Era of Evolving Data
The access layers for these multi-structured data platforms are either not based on SQL or not only
SQL. NoSQL platforms include the following data structures:
Wide column: The Apache Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) and associated sub-projects
utilize a wide column data structure flexible enough to store any dataset.
Key-value: The programming array concept is based on a key-value format. Databases such as
Cassandra utilize this format to build flexible data structures.
Multi-dimensional map: Stores such as Hadapt store information in a multi-dimensional map
that allows for flexible definitions based on the ability to nest different key-value structures.
Document data store: Applications such as MongoDB and
CouchDB store information using a document format based on
either XML or JSON.

Because no one platform

can meet all the challenges
inherent in the current
state of data management,
these platforms are
used in concert.

Because no one platform can meet all the challenges inherent in the
current state of data management, these platforms are used in concert.
Many times the information in a NoSQL platform can be modeled and
transformed into a standardized SQL environment. And since, as we
saw in Figure 2, most organizations have the majority of their data in
relational systems, it is critical that these new types of data sources can
be integrated with existing system definitions. With a Coordinated Data
Management Environment, this process becomes an incremental effort as opposed to a series of oneoff projects with repeated levels of effort, and there is no need to start from scratch and reinvent the
wheel with each new project core data definitions can be reused and leveraged in new applications.

Increasing Importance of Data in Business

From analytics and reporting to database administration to new areas of data-centric application
development, the ability to effectively manage metadata and provide visibility into data model structures
will be the key allowing these disparate groups to manage data across initiatives.
With a CDME, the following areas will be able to re-use common models and definitions without
building from scratch:
Advanced analytics
Application development
Business intelligence reporting
Enterprise architecture
Database administration
Cloud-based infrastructure
Master data management
Data governance and data stewardship
The Business Agility, enabled within these areas, provides the foundation of proactive data management.
This includes reduced time to implementation for projects such as integrating data from cloud-based
platforms with in-house applications; reduced costs relating to rework between existing data models
and new model development; and improved levels of analytics and reporting across the organization.

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Data Modeling in a Coordinated Data Management Environment:

The Key to Business Agility in the Era of Evolving Data
Significance of Collaboration

With this proliferation of platform types, system instances and data

structures, collaboration becomes a key aspect of communication
between business and technology teams. Business analysts and line of
business executives working on analytics and reporting requirements must
communicate quickly and effectively with data stewards and enterprise
architecture groups. It also becomes important to collaborate internally
within groups as geographic and time zone distribution becomes more
common in modern organizations. For example, technology teams, such
as application developers and database administrators, cannot only be
in different buildings, but are more often than not on different offices
around a particular country, if not the globe.

It also becomes important

to collaborate internally
within groups as geographic
and time zone distribution
becomes more common
in modern organizations.

Ideally, data governance is a cross-team effort. IT teams understand the underlying technical
implementation aspects such as data types, constraints and loads. Business stakeholders are responsible
for the semantic definition of customer, product and employee. It would only seem natural that if you
were going to have an effective data governance program, it would include participation from business
and technology.
Yet more often than not, data governance is assigned to the group that has the most access to the data
IT. This puts IT teams that may not have a true grasp of how business stakeholders use the data in the
drivers seat. A CDME with collaboration tools allows for automated coordination, breaking down the
walls between the two groups and turning data governance into that ideal joint effort.
By linking semantic business definitions with technical implementation information, a central facility
allows for the collaboration between business and IT to be much more efficient. Each group assesses
information in the format and view that best influences its role(s) in the organization. A technology
stakeholder can coordinate with representatives from the line of business without needing to translate
from technical details to business semantics and back again. Being able to actively collaborate between
the groups with a translation mechanism enables the iterative nature of Business Agility.
By including various business stakeholders in the process when adjustments are made to data definition
and management, the door opens to involve business stakeholders in the data quality assurance aspects
of data governance. If communication is intuitive, business stakeholders can use the collaborative tools
to make requests for adjustments when they see data quality issues in their semantic definitions.

To Improve is to Change
Winston Churchill once said:

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

With the coordinated administration of data models and their associated metadata mitigating the
disruptive forces in data management, Business Agility and the path to Churchills perfection can be
achieved. By leveraging the foundations of data modeling that have been successfully implemented in
the past, we can improve upon and perfect these methods to include new data sources in our data
models and output formats for our business and technical metadata for new roles within and external
to our organizations.

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Data Modeling in a Coordinated Data Management Environment:

The Key to Business Agility in the Era of Evolving Data
However, without coordinated data management, Churchills approach fails to deliver. The disruptive
forces in the form of non-relational data and the proliferation of platform types create new editions
of the silos that data management professionals have spent years attempting to avoid. A Coordinated
Data Management Environment for data models and metadata via modern collaboration techniques
is key to Business Agility. In an era of expanding numbers of systems to manage, increasing data loads
and diversifying structures, centralized data model and metadata management avoids the nightmare of
spider web data governance and increases business stakeholder ownership of data model development
and quality.

EMA Perspective

The world of data management is changing and business stakeholders want

quicker results, better governance, and more visibility and input into the
development and maintenance of data models and associated metadata.
Implementation of a Coordinated Data Management Environment makes
faster response, and thus Business Agility, possible. Rather than creating the
spider web of connections between systems, a single point of information
regarding the data source metadata in a business is created.

Implementation of
a Coordinated Data
Management Environment
makes faster response,
and thus Business
Agility, possible.

Using this type of facility, organizations can match speed of implementation and coordinate between
the myriad new sources and data formats at the speed of data delivery required for Business Agility.
Organizations, which develop required speed of implementation to meet the challenges presented by
the disruptive forces in data management, will have an advantage over their peers in the marketplace.
If organizations, in particular IT departments, are not responsive to business change, business
stakeholders will force change. For example, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and the Marketing
organization may push to have its own operational and analytical environments either in the corporate
data center or in the cloud.1 Cloud-based systems are breaking down corporate firewalls to offer
solutions that the line of business can utilize without direct control by the CIO. All of this expands
the number of platforms that contain data that can and should be utilized by an organization to either
develop competitive advantage with revenue creation or cost reductionor both.
Enabling Business Agility is not just an activity for internal technical and business teams. Software
product vendors are recognizing the need for Business Agility from their clients. CA ERwin, a leading
vendor for data modeling, has recognized this evolution in the market. New data sources and ways
of collaboration with internal and external stakeholders drive the requirement to integrate between
platforms and tools. CA ERwins enhancements have built upon their traditional strengths in data
model and metadata management and have moved to establish a CDME framework where business
and technical stakeholders can work together on integrated views of a companys information.
To create a Coordinated Data Management Environment, vendors must work together to ensure
metadata interchange. EMA has seen that in conjunction with CA Technologies efforts, other software
vendors are recognizing the advantages of coordinated data management in their applications, allowing
an even broader set of users to tap into a shared business and technical metadata. Casewise, a provider
of business process management and business architecture solutions, has integrated data modeling by
OEM-ing the CA ERwin package with its offerings.2 For analytical platforms, BIReady is utilizing a
1

H
 artman, Glen, How To Close The CMO-CIO Trust Gap And Bolster Corporate Growth, Forbes.com, August 28, 2013,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2013/08/28/how-to-close-the-cmo-cio-trust-gap-and-bolster-corporate-growth
 Casewise Signs OEM Agreement with CA Technologies to Help Businesses Ease DecisionMaking, Casewise.com, April 29 2013 http://www.casewise.com/news-and-events/news/
casewise-signs-oem-agreement-with-ca-technologies-to-help-businesses-ease-decision-making

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Data Modeling in a Coordinated Data Management Environment:

The Key to Business Agility in the Era of Evolving Data
similar architecture, also OEM-ing CA ERwin, to speed the deployment of analytical solutions by
using a data modeling for front-end design.3 In both of these cases, data modeling and collaboration
features are key to the speed, flexibility and ease of use required to reduce time to implementation.
By making the definition, management and collaboration around the growing complexity of data
management more integrated, a CDME enables Business Agility for organizations. It positions them to
be proactive instead of reactive in their approach to the aspects of data management that include data
governance, data quality and high-level data modeling. In this era of disruptive forces, organizations
looking to get ahead of their challenges must embrace technologies that support the Coordinated
Data Management Environment. Business stakeholders and IT teams will gain far greater flexibly and
productivity using these techniques.
3

 BIReady CA ERwin Package, biready.com, September 13 2012, http://biready.com/news/

biready-announces-oem-agreement-with-ca-technologies-to-streamli/

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