Big Data, Knowledge Management, and Enterprise Architecture

Internet provides us explosive information these days and still growing. Internet helps us collect and distribute information conveniently and still getting better. However, information has to be organized and be comprehended to become knowledge. In addition to the usual information that enterprise has internally, such as the information in the enterprise content management systems, databases and data warehouse, enterprise architecture, etc., public Internet content also provide information sources for knowledge extraction serving the enterprise, such as wikipedia, blogs, social network, social media, etc. We need a cohesive approach for knowledge management, to support both decision making and innovation inspiration.

Information can be obtained through data processing, and knowledge can be obtained through information processing. The conversion from data to information usually doesn’t need to consider the information receivers. However, the conversion from information to knowledge has to consider the knowledge receivers. Knowledge to one person can be only information to another, because another person cannot comprehend it. In other words, information is target less, while knowledge has target and beholder. Therefore, for information to become knowledge, we have to organize them for its targeted audience.

A successful enterprise architecture development process is also a process that transforms data to information, and transforms information to knowledge for its targeted audience via various views. We can also have a cohesive management approach for knowledge, information and data with the help of enterprise architecture.