Enterprise Information Management – the next evolutionary step

Enterprise Information Management describes an approach which goes well beyond IAM, ECM, and other technologies - due to the fact that it is an integrated view, from the perspective of the information owner and information user.

Today, there are two major issues around information management. One is the diversity of technologies you need to manage information. The other is the pretty technical view. Information management today is addressed with different technologies, seen from different viewpoints, and in general tackled in a way which isn't appropriate for most users. We need ECM here, IRM (Information Rights Management) there, put in some classification and apply IAM to shield information.

What we need, instead, is an integrated approach which starts at the information. There is a contract or a blueprint - how shall it be managed? How sensitive is this information? In which way shall it be archived? Who is allowed to access, to print, to copy, to forward this information? Interestingly, this could be solved relatively easy, because the information owner knows about the sensitivity and he as well knows which single users or groups of users - let's call them business roles - are allowed to do what. In most cases, the answers can be even given automatically by rules. Contracts have to be archived in a defined way, allow only very few classification categories if any, and so on.

Enterprise Information Management will be the integration of many approaches which are available and often implemented today. It will require a strong basis in the IAM and ECM field, but it will provide an entirely new approach on how we handle information and fulfill GRC requirements, driven by the information owner. You could call Enterprise Information Management as well Information-centric IT.

Today we observe first approaches towards Enterprise Information Management but we are convinced that there will be more integrated solution within the next years, becoming a cornerstone of every IT infrastructure. We support this with thought leadership and an intensive research in all IT segments which are tangled by Enterprise Information Management.