A quick intro into

Management (EIM)

Enterprise

Information

Techopedia, an online encyclopedia dedicated to technology points out

that Enterprise Information Management (abbreviated as EIM)
is a
somehow broadly term in the IT referring to methods and strategies that
use existing data in a well manner. Describing an EIM project, the same
encyclopedia, points out that a typical EIM project usually takes
information about the business and uses it effectively toward any given
objective.
Techtarget, on the other head, views the EIM as being a comprehensive set
of business processes, disciplines and practices that are specifically used
with the sole purpose of managing the information from and organization
towards becoming an enterprise asset.
A final consideration that I find to be interesting is the fact that EIM tries to
overcome the traditional IT related barriers, like information silos, in order
to manage the information at an enterprise level (Ulrich Kampffmeyer,
2013).
A specific trait that makes EIM such an important asset for an enterprise is
the
fact
that
EIM approaches information management from an
enterprise perspective. Disciplines like business inteligence or enterprise
content manage, that cover local information sources, are part of the
global EIM strategy.
Another particularity of EIM referes to the nature of information. While BI
and ECM make the distincition between structured and unstructured
information, EIM avoids this distinction.
In order to implement an EIM strategy in your company you will have to
make use of Information Systems that help you to (Enterprise Information
Management, 2008):

Access, reconcile, and syncronize information from diverse sources

Integrate structured data and unstructured content
Respond to information queries, searchers, or service invocations
Provide a semantically consistent view of current information
Support easy visualisation and navigation of results
Protect security and privacy, and comply with regulatory policies

Alexandru MOLDOVAN
alexandru.moldovan@uni.li

References:
Enterprise Information Management. Information Virtualization for a
Unified Business View. (2008). Retrieved September, 18, 2014 from:
http://italy.emc.com/collateral/leadership/h5586-enterprise-informationmanagement-wp.pdf
Kampffmeyer, Ulrich. (2013). EIM Enterprise Information Management.
Retrieved,
September,
18,
2014
from:
http://www.projectconsult.de/files/EIM-KAMPFFMEYER-EN.pdf
Techopedia,
http://www.techopedia.com/definition/28046/enterpriseinformation-management-eim
TechTarget,
http://searchcontentmanagement.techtarget.com/definition/enterpriseinformation-management-EIM

Database design, ETL, Drilling up or down.

Definition:
Enterprise information management (EIM) is a term that is used somewhat
broadly in IT to refer to methods and strategies that use existing data well.
An EIM project or resource takes information about the business and uses it
effectively toward any given objective.
(http://www.techopedia.com/definition/28046/enterprise-informationmanagement-eim )
Enterprise information management (EIM) is the set of business processes,
disciplines and practices used to manage the information created from an
organization's data as an enterprise asset.

(http://searchcontentmanagement.techtarget.com/definition/enterpriseinformation-management-EIM )
It specializes in finding solutions for optimal use of information within
organizations, for instance to support decision-making processes or day-today operations that require the availability of knowledge. It tries to overcome
traditional IT-related barriers [2] to managing information at an enterprise
level. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_information_management )
Enterprise information management combines business
intelligence (BI) and enterprise content
management (ECM). Enterprise informationmanagement takes these two approac
hes to managing information one step further, in that it approaches information
management from anenterprise perspective. Where BI and ECM respectively man
age structured and unstructured information, EIM does not make this "technical"d
istinction. It approaches the management of information from the perspective of
enterprise information strategy, based on the needs ofinformation workers. ECM
and BI in a sense choose a denominationalised approach, since they only cover p
art of the information within anorganization. This results in a lack of available info
rmation during decision-making processes, market
analysis or procedure definition.
(http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Enterprise+Information+Management
)

(http://www.esa.int/esapub/bulletin/bullet92/b92raitt.htm )
Scientfic paper: (http://italy.emc.com/collateral/leadership/h5586enterprise-information-management-wp.pdf )
EIM is a strategic combination of components and services that delivers
consistent, timely, and meaningful information to analytic and operation
business processes. In a sense, EIM virtualizes diverse sources of
information to provide a unified business view.

Customers consistently identify rapid access to relevant information

among the top two business requirements for IT. IDC, 2007
Presenting enterprise users with a current and unified view of information
has multiple technical challenges.
Making EIM a reality generally requires IS that help to:

Access, reconcile, and syncronize information from diverse sources

Integrate structured data and unstructured content
Respond to information queries, searchers, or service invocations
Provide a semantically consistent view of current information
Support easy visualisation and navigation of results
Protect security and privacy, and comply with regulatory policies

Representative EIM Use Cases:

Analytical use case:
1. Manage enterprise business performance
2. Enabling knowledge workers to create short-lived, individualized views
3. Improve product quality
4. Create a unified view of information to support legal discovery
(eDiscovery)
5. Predict costs over multi-year manufacturing process
6. Assess experimental drug effectiveness
7. Locate colleagues with specific expertise
8. Search reports and unearth relevant facts for enterprise decision
making
Operational use case:
1. Track inventory levels
2. Manage master data
3. Identify and classify complex enterprise events
4. Manage digital assets
5. Improve marketing to telecom customers
6. Integrate multiple databases and information sources
7. Provide a single point of entry to government information
(eGovernment)
8. Access multiple, diverse systems
9. Enable collaborative information stewardship
10. Support ITIL change and configuration management processes
11. Improve data center availability
12. Assess enterprise information performance and risk
Technical challenges of EIM:
1. Dealing with varying degrees of structure in information sources 2
2. Dynamically locating information and accesing it securely
3. Understanding the meaning of information

4. Integrating federated, heterogeneous information

5. Facilitating user navigation, visualisation, and analysis of information
1. Dealing with varying degrees of structure in information
sources
It is estimated that more than 85 percent of data growth is in unstructured
and semi-structured content.
There is tremendous value, in taking structured data about customers and
being able to link it to relevant unstructured and semi-structured
information.
2. Dynamically locating information and accesing it securely
3. Understanding the meaning of information
Information transformation and mapping approaches can clean and
normalize data to create integrated views, although sometimes at the
cost of burying semantic knowledge deeply in transformation process.
Where unstructured or semi-structured information is involved, many
aspects of meaning need to be derived in a process often called content
analysis. Automated content analysis and metadata extraction reduce the
burden on human users to classify or tag information. Several key
concepts from the semantic web help to express the meaning of content
in ways that can be understood by software agents as well as people. An
ontology is a precisely defined common terminology that corresponds to
a specific domain of knowledge such as vehicles.
SAWSDL Web Services Description Language
4. Integrating federated, heterogeneous information
Federated information refers to information from systems and sources
where overall central authority is weak, although partial sharing and
coordination are possible.
5. Facilitating user navigation, visualisation, and analysis of
information
Anticipating user information needs starts with database design.
Navigating information means bridging to related information or drilling
up or down with respect to the level of detail. Traditionally, structured
enterprise information has dimensions such as time, business unit,
geographic region, product family, product price, customer segment, and
sales channel. Unstructured content also has dimensions, or facets, which
depend on content attributes, tags, classifications, and associated
metadata.
Information analysis. The most important metrics are sometimes called
key performance indicators (KPI).

Information Virtualization THE EIM STACK

The stack break down into the following areas:

Structured information access on page
Unstructured and semi-structured information processing on page
Business analysis and applications on page
Coordination and integration on page
Information governance and management on page
Grid operating environment on page