Agility is necessary because it enables businesses to quickly adapt their business models to suit the requirements of customers, innovations and shifting competitive situations. Comprehensible data is the most important prerequisite for agility. This data is flexible when dealing with exceptions (variance in the data) and permits changes to the data models during runtime.
Intelligent use of data is an increasingly fundamental prerequisite for innovation and growth. In order to extract business value from data, however, the data must be smart. It must therefore be given meaning (semantics) and interconnected with other data. As a result, it can be enriched with intelligence and can represent knowledge or value. In a semantic network, data becomes smart and its significance becomes clear – both for people and computers.
There are major challenges associated with the integration of heterogeneous data sets. Silo structures and rapidly growing volumes of unstructured data make it difficult to unleash the potential of data. During integration, businesses not only need to understand data from different sources but also to see the relationships between the various data items. A powerful data model with flexibility, clarity and intelligence is also ideal for helping with difficult integration processes.
