Entity Resolution Cloud Rising in 2010
By Robert Barker, Infoglide Senior VP & Chief Marketing Officer
A recent Information Week article referenced Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s views on the future of IT that were offered during a December 17th analyst call. His remarks hint at the growing importance of cloud computing as a key driver in 2010. Writer Bob Evans mentioned that “Ellison also quite casually wove the terms ‘private clouds’ and ‘cloud computing’ into his strategic overview without lampooning them, which was a big step forward even though Ellison’s discomfort with the term is shared by IBM CEO Sam Palmisano and Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd.”
Oracle sees an opportunity to gain ground on IBM and HP by using cloud computing to reduce the amount of integration required for large implementations. IBM’s strength has been its Global Services organization that leverages domain expertise in multiple verticals to maintain account relationships. HP absorbed a huge services organization by acquiring EDS to compete more effectively with IBM, and Dell recently gained its own services play by acquiring Perot Systems.
Based on Ellison’s comments, he believes that many customers would like to buy pre-integrated systems rather than multiple components that require costly and time-consuming integration projects. “We think that makes it much easier for the customer—they don’t have to buy all the individual parts and glue them together—but instead they buy the boxes: a high-margin product for us and a high-value purchase for them because they don’t have to spend a lot of money on systems integration.”
Entity resolution has historically been delivered in one of two ways: (1) as components to be integrated into existing systems or (2) as standalone enterprise solutions. Many traditional identity resolution applications deal with fraud prevention and detection, so customers insisted that the software and the data it operates on reside behind the firewall.
As the need for entity resolution broadens, however, old constraints will be overcome. New applications will be created and objections to cloud computing will erode when it becomes a more accepted part of corporate computing. Expect to see development of new entity resolution solutions incorporate cloud computing concepts in various forms to enhance ease of integration and to reduce costs.
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