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09.29.09 Developing Stronger Information Architecture For Enterprise 2.0  By Bill IvesThis is the third in a series of interviews with Samuel Driessen, Information Architect at Océ, about their Enterprise 2.0 implementation and adoption experiences. Océ is a leading international provider of digital document management technology and services. Earlier, I wrote out their micro-messaging and wiki experiences (see Implementing Enterprise Micro-messaging with Yammer at Océ and Implementing Wikis in the Age of Enterprise 2.0 at Océ). Samuel is located in the Netherlands and his responsibilities include both the information architecture for structured information in applications such as PLMS and SAP and the unstructured information in places such as email and knowledge management programs. I really like this dual architectural role for both structured and unstructured information. It makes so much sense to have these two information sources under the same architectural leadership. Usually knowledge management and IT data management are siloed, limiting the effectiveness of both. This is the first time I have seen this and I commend the vision of Océ. In this post I go into more depth on their information architecture approach. Samuel began by pointing out that in the US, the term information architect is often used to describe a web site designer. In Europe, it is more often used to describe a person who manages enterprise information within an architecture. At Océ, there are three levels of architecture: business architecture layer, information architecture, application architecture and infrastructure. The business architecture defines and manages the business processes. The application layer provides the IT tools and (network) security and the information architecture translates the business requirements into IT requirements and tool.
The information architecture is the glue that bonds business and IT components and it looks at both structured and unstructured information. The unstructured information can give context to the structured information. More on this soon. The nature of security has changed in the current internet age. In the past, a company could simply build a firewall around all of its information and employees could interact with security within this firewall. Now the firewalls are opening up to share selected company information with partners and clients. Security needs to be more granular to support both multi-site and multidisciplinary collaboration. Information security is intended to be defined at the information object and transaction level, to facilitate global collaboration with other Océ sites and trusted partners. With multi-site Océ means: collaboration between multiple Océ and non-Océ sites. With multi-disciplinary Océ means: collaboration between mechanical, electronic, software and manufacturing engineers, purchasers, etc. Both are essential to remain competitive. At the same time, the old concept for employees was to provide only what they need to know for their job as determined by management. Now with the greatly expanded availability of information over the Web, the concept has shifted from a top down definition of what each employee needs to know to letting employees make greater decisions about the information they need and providing assistance helping them filter the abundant information available to find what they need. The concept is that smart people are hired so they need to be given more power and freedom to take advantage of their capabilities. Continue reading this article. About the Author: Dr. Bill Ives is an independent consultant and writer who has worked with Fortune 100 companies in business uses of emerging technologies for over 20 years. For several years he led the Knowledge Management Practice for a large consulting firm.. Now he primarily helps companies with their business blogs. He is also the VP of Social Media and blogger for TVissimo, a new TV schedule search engine. Prior to consulting, Dr. Ives was a Research Associate at Harvard University exploring the effects of media on cognition. He obtained his Ph. D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Toronto. Bill can be reached at his blog: Portals and KM. He also writes for the FastForward blog and the AppGap blog. |
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