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Boundaryless Information Flow is Real and Relevant

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EA, Business Agility, and Boundaryless Information Flow

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Deciding on Open Source

Managing the Flow

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Directories - If There Were No Directories I Couldn't Find IT

Boundaryless Information Flow & Enterprise Architecture

Thinking Strategically about Certified Products

Architecture: Make IT Work for You

Open Source and Standards

Architecture: An Essential Tool for the CIO

What Keeps CIO Awake

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CIO Corner with Terry Blevins

Managing the Flow of Information

With every Member Conference we see further evidence that information must flow throughout an enterprise to make our business work, and the importance of The Open Group’s vision of Boundaryless Information Flow™.

Managing this flow of information necessitates the automation of business processes, which enables automation of business activities to help people capture, organize, and visualize information about the business environment. This, in turn, enables business- or mission-focused decision-making. Managing information flow ensures effective and consistent transfer of information between process activities, reducing manual re-entry errors and improving efficiency.

Information must flow between various providers of information and consumers of information, sometimes virtually in real-time. This information must flow when an information provider instigates the flow; for example, when an individual sends an email. Information must flow when an information consumer requests the information; for example, when an individual requests information from a database. Information must flow to specific consumers of information when information changes; for example, when a stock market value is reached or when a certain threshold in reached.

When information flows it may need to be reviewed by multiple gatekeepers, human or machine, to ensure that information is only delivered for authorized use. It may pass through various stages for augmentation to ensure that the information is in the right format. It may even flow to multiple intermediate stops, human or machine, serially or in parallel.

To deal with these diverse elements, an environment needs an open set of services to manage information flow. For our purposes we will refer to these services as information flow services.

Information flow services support both applications and processes, and allow those applications and processes to be focused on the business or mission of the organization, as opposed to dealing with the idiosyncrasies of the computing environment. Information flow services must also support the monitoring and control of the flow and capture statistics for process and performance improvement. Information flow services should enhance productivity by making computer systems active components of the business process and eliminating much of the manual coordinating activity that goes on in an organization today. And information flow services must enable workers connected over a network to collaborate and coordinate their work.

In many cases, a workflow engine is responsible for controlling and tracking the flow of information by providing information flow services. Routing decisions are made in the workflow engine to protect the applications and process from changes in the environment, and to allow for definition, control, and analysis of the flow. Active triggers in database and application systems that automate action under specified conditions are yet another key element of information flow services.

It is easy to see that information flow services are a vital part of today’s business infrastructure. The next conference of The Open Group in Brussels, April 19-23, 2004, will focus on the different techniques and services that are being used today. We will also take a look at the standards that support managing the flow of information. I hope you will join us in April.

Please contact me if you would like to discuss managing the flow of information services further. Email t.blevins

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