Information-as-a-Service (IaaS) is an approach to information management that uses canonical data models to define the structure and semantics of information, as well as rules for the exchange of information between endpoints. Emerging demands for more powerful information management capabilities are driving the adoption of IaaS.

As a discipline, IaaS reflects a further convergence between software development and information management. The approach is based on principles of service oriented architecture (SOA), which is is conveniently becoming the dominant model for software development.

There’s a natural tendency to view IaaS as merely the wrapping of data management code with service-oriented interfaces to provide a higher abstraction level than is supported by conventional database queries. While this is a useful step in understanding IaaS, it shortchanges the concept. IaaS can provide access to all types of structured and unstructured information through service-oriented interfaces.

One key to the full power of IaaS lies in the realm of enterprise information management (EIM). EIM is a discipline that supports a company's ability to leverage information as a strategic asset by all types of consumers—people, applications, services, processes, and devices. Rich Internet applications (RIAs), the semantic Web, and new (declarative) programming models all represent the emergence of EIM capabilities, which are also helping to drive the convergence of software development and information management.

EIM requires more than just wrapping data management code with service oriented interfaces. There are two basic reasons for this:

• Contracts vs. interfaces – Contracts address more issues than interfaces and provide a higher-level abstraction than interfaces.
• Data vs. information – IaaS addresses more than data. Data management typically refers to structured data; that is, data that conforms to a rigid, pre-defined schema. Information, on the other hand, includes data and many other forms of digital content.

EIM must leverage contracts and target semi-structured and unstructured information in addition to structured data. EIM sub disciplines include:

• Canonical modeling: information modeling independent of any specific application or business process.
• Master data management (MDM) – MDM is the discipline of describing core business entities in a consistent manner across systems and silos.  MDM is essentially canonical modeling for core business entities.

This frames IaaS as an element of EIM.  In fact, IaaS can be regarded as the goal of EIM, while canonical modeling and MDM are methods of implementing EIM to achieve its goal of dishing up all kinds of information on demand, as needed by business applications.

In my next post, I'll dig a bit deeper into some of the semantic issues behind the convergence of software development and information management.