IT SPENDING PROJECTIONS AND BENCHMARKING WHITE PAPER
Complete our brief IT measurement survey and receive a complimentary
performance benchmarking white paper and an overview of 2004 IT spending
projections for 21 industry sectors. As soon as you complete the survey,
you will gain access to these valuable resources. You may also elect to
receive the final results of this survey. Click here to participate.
http://www.metagroup.com/surveys/ITBenchmark_MeasurementSurvey.html
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FEATURED RESEARCH
PRIVACY ACROSS BORDERS
Privacy regulations pose multiple challenges for multinational
organizations, the primary being the burden of determining which privacy
laws apply. This depends not only on the country in which an
organization is registered as a legal entity and where the data
controller is nominated, but also on the processors of the data. For
example, with personal data stored in a database of the holding
organization in one country, processed by a subsidiary via networks and
servers in a second country, and operated by a partner in a third
country, this can pose a significant challenge. The user population can
be diverse, with IT organizations processing personal data originating
from several countries within a single IT infrastructure. An IT
organization might not be familiar with the procedures required by law
in another country with which they otherwise have no relationship (e.g.,
when offering goods and services over the Internet). In addition, not
all countries pursue the same approach with regard to cross-border
transfers.
Click here to read the full text of this META Group article (free member
login required).
http://www.metagroup.com/memberinfo/43744
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META GROUP'S 2004 RISK, SECURITY, AND COMPLIANCE CONFERENCE
"Protect, Serve, and Comply: Beating the Risky Business Blues"
April 27-29, 2004 - New Orleans
Between growing regulatory demands and ominous security threats, how can
you balance investment priorities, protect the business, meet your
service commitments, and achieve regulatory compliance? For practical
answers, please join us in New Orleans for META Group's second annual
Risk, Security, and Compliance Conference & Technology Showcase. Taking
place during New Orleans' renowned Jazz Festival, this conference will
address the performance mandates of today's most critical IT components:
security, disaster recovery, risk management, and regulatory compliance.
This event will deliver the specific, actionable, high-value guidance
you need to beat today's "risky business blues." All this, plus the
bonus of enjoying the great music, food, and festive atmosphere of New
Orleans during Jazz Fest!
Please note: CIOs may attend for free.
http://www.metagroup.com/sec2004
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AUDIO BRIEFING
REGULATORY AND RECORDS MANAGEMENT COMPLIANCE FOR E-MAIL AND IM
E-mail and instant messaging are subject to a variety of internal and
external records management and regulatory policies. Companies must
understand the appropriate issues and act accordingly. To learn more
about this topic, listen to this audio briefing by META Group analysts
Matt Cain and David Yockelson and view the accompanying slides.
Click here to listen to this briefing (free member login required).
http://www.metagroup.com/memberinfo/45592
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THE IT MEASUREMENT WEBCAST SERIES
Don't miss the final event in our IT Measurement Webcast Series:
"How Do I Design and Implement a Performance Measurement Program That
Delivers Value?"
Thursday, December 11, 2003
11:30 am to 1:00 pm ET (US)
If you were unable to attend the previous two events in this series, you
can get caught up on everything you missed by downloading the on-demand
presentation and recording from META Group's Web site.
To access the first two webcasts from the series and register for the
third, visit: http://www.metagroup.com/info/measurement14
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FEATURED ARTICLE
ENTERPRISE INFORMATION INTEGRATION IS HIGH PRIORITY FOR TELCOS
As if the challenges and changes telecommunications carriers dealt with
during the past decade were not enough, the industry faces still more
radical evolution in the near future. Competition in wireless,
long-distance, Internet, and local service will continue to commoditize
products and slash profits - while the specter of IP-based telephony
grows larger.
In addition to these pressures, most carriers must face the problems
they have with data integration, which are particularly acute. "Most
carriers were acquiring companies, not integrating companies, so billing
and other systems have proliferated. Clearly, they have data management
problems," says META Group analyst David Willis.
The lack of data integration manifests itself in many ways. It extends
vertically within business units, so areas that could benefit greatly
from sharing information - such as those involved with customer
acquisition and churn - cannot. Business units also cannot share data,
so wireless providers maybe at odds with traditional services.
Telcos also have to improve their ability to share data with partner
service providers, though many have been slow to do so. The less data
management is standardized and simplified internally, the greater the
opportunity many carriers have to protect revenue streams from new
competitors, at least in the short term. Data integration problems are
often compounded by such political and organizational inertia.
Telecommunications companies are attempting to overcome these hurdles to
achieve greater efficiency, flexibility, and profitability. "Decreasing
costs by investing wisely in operational efficiency of customer service
is critical, given that customer retention is more important than ever,"
says META Group analyst Aaron Zornes.
The key to improving efficiency is the development of real-time
enterprise information integration (EII) systems. EII encompasses master
data types (customer, supplier, parts, employee, etc). Such master data
management applications support some degree of persistence for master
data as needed but, by definition, fixate on real time. Unlike
extract/transform/load solutions, advanced EII solutions provide
write-back capability to the source, in addition to ensuring that data
quality occurs upstream rather than downstream.
Longer term, such solutions also provide the platform for businesses to
share customer and supplier information with business partners. Customer
data integration and business-to-business supply chain integration are
the top two EII initiatives for many telcos. "Telcos have an overarching
need for customer and supplier data that provides immediacy, accuracy,
and intimacy," says Zornes. "Furthermore, 'plan anywhere, build
anywhere' strategies are forcing market-leading telcos to invest in new
technologies that enable quicker new product introduction at lower cost
without sacrificing quality."
EII solutions can assist "immediacy" by enhancing a telco's capabilities
to support real-time marketing. Accuracy increases as customer master
data no longer flows through telco product-specific databases, but
instead is coordinated as a corporate resource. Customer "intimacy"
increases dramatically as the unified view of each customer results in
superior service, in addition to quickly identifying new cross-selling
opportunities within the existing customer base.
"EII-type solutions will incorporate the functionality of traditional
batch-style analytics but bring them closer to real time," says Zornes.
"This will require vendors to provide new types of data models and
improved middleware, as well as incremental data models to facilitate
the transition."
However, the transition to EII will not happen quickly or smoothly.
"Generally, organizations grossly underestimate the migration costs, in
terms of both time and money, for integrating data and improving its
quality," says META Group analyst Jerald Murphy.
USER ACTION: Corporate master data - especially supplier and customer
data - is a critical asset that must be increasingly synchronized within
and beyond the contemporary telco, primarily to solve business problems
and not to re-engineer existing processes. IT organizations within
telcos must continue to pioneer the real-time aspect of enterprise
information integration solutions. IT organizations must add enterprise
information integration solutions to their shopping list, since vendor
attention to master data synchronization accelerates the diversity and
availability of offerings.
META Group analysts Aaron Zornes, David Willis, Jerald Murphy, Kurt
Schlegel, Doug Laney, and Peter Firstbrook contributed to this article.
Visit META Group's Enterprise Analytics Resource Center.
http://www.metagroup.com/resourcecenter/EA
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