Promotion/marketing

[Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>]

Greetings!

Possibly something, maybe nothing but a theme for promoting/marketing 
ICOM occurred to me and I wanted to toss it out for discussion.

ICOM: An Uncommon/Common Model

All semantic integration solutions rely on either ETL 
(extract-transform-load) or VA (view-as) to arrive at a common model for 
data. But arriving at a common model, while a first step towards 
semantic integration, is only the first step.

Security:

Imagine your reaction to a health club where you were told to put all 
your wallet, iPhone, watch, Blackberry and your clothes into a common 
box with everyone else's wallets, iPhones, watches, and Blackberries. A 
common model to be sure but not a very secure one.

ICOM is an Uncommon/Common model because granular security is layered 
onto the common models that make up ICOM, enabling you to insure that 
integrated data collections conform to your corporate security policies.

Private/Proprietary/Public:

For semantic integration you can:

Develop private models, which means your staff has to maintain and learn 
your model. You are unable to hire staff who have existing skills for 
your model.

Use proprietary models, which means you can hire staff with existing 
skills, but ties your semantic integration fate to that of a third-party 
vendor.

ICOM is an Uncommon/Common model that was developed and is being 
maintained in a public forum. You can have a direct voice in the 
governance of the model for your semantic integration efforts.

ICOM means you can hire staff with existing skills and have a voice in 
the model for your data.

Standard:

There are formal standards, of which ICOM is one but there are also 
defacto standards, and ICOM is one of those as well.

(This point may need to be deferred until we have several large vendors 
supporting ICOM.)

In addition to being an OASIS standard, ICOM appears in products from 
(list here the vendors who are the backbone of the Internet), making it 
a defacto standard for semantic integration.

******
Obviously need refinement but thinking that tying those three points 
together with illustrations from the model, (limited illustrations, not 
every capability), would make a start on promoting ICOM to a larger 
audience.

I suspect security and a *voice* in model development is likely to 
resonate with government and other players.

Hope everyone is having a great week!

Patrick

-- 
Patrick Durusau
patrick@durusau.net
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)

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