Hidden Danger

  Business Intelligence   Strategy  

With the current boom in offshore development, no type of development project seems to be off limits. Everything from J2EE projects to mainframe support to data warehousing is being done overseas. Several months ago, I wrote a column describing the value proposition for doing BI projects offshore. While the premise for having an offshore component to your portfolio is still germane, there are hidden costs that I find that mitigate the value proposition. In the world of BI offshore development, one such hidden factor is data security

One important thing to consider is that the data in your warehouse is your crown jewel. The information is what gives you the strategic advantage, helps you build relationships with your customers and lets you know more about your products. If that information was stolen or passed on to a competitor, that could have serious ramifications on your strategic advantage.

Offshore development for BI applications puts data security in the spotlight. Without doubt, when developing a BI application, you need to look at your data throughout all stages of the application development process. Data is analyzed for quality assessments, as a basis for understanding data model relationships, as a mechanism to test data conversions at all stages and as a final check on traceability to ensure that the data was properly enabled through the BI…

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