Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 60 | Page 52

CASE STUDY control access to data across the organisation , can be rolled out quickly , and most importantly can be adopted by business users with limited technical support .
Given the fact that the JSE is one of the 20 largest stock exchanges in the world and has operated as a marketplace for over 120 years , how did you as head , IT Enterprise Integration of the company , together with your IT teams involve the business line leaders at C-Suite to ensure buy-in for the Denodo Platform rollout ?
The IT team created an Enterprise Integration roadmap which was approved at EXCO . The roadmap was a result of extensive investigations into our burning issues , as well as taking an educated guess to what the future may hold . We then embarked on an incremental journey to integrate the product into the institution . Because the product was addressing specific burning issues , we were able to solve these issues during various project implementations . Thus , using the projects as a vehicle to implement the product . Executive sponsors were very supportive as they understood the historic issues , and how the Denodo Platform managed to solve them .
Who led the business case for the JSE to implement the Denodo data virtualisation platform and what support did you receive from your C-Suite peers ? and broke down ivory towers . Because we used an incremental approach to rollout , various C-Suite sponsors enabled the delivery of the platform . A solid track record is important – therefore it was critical to ensure that after each phase , the platform was reliable , cost effective and performed to expectation . Another key factor , particularly in the exchange environment , is IP and continuity . Despite various challenges , the finance team ensured that the team remained intact , even to this day , to retain deep skills in the tech .
How long did the Denodo Platform project take to implement from the time approval was granted to scoping , designing and rollout ?
After approval , the pilot phase was completed in nine months . During this time there was an element of foundational work performed to establish concepts like Canonical Models , high availability etc . We also performed rigorous testing on the platform as well as functional testing . A soft go-live followed , which compared the product in production to its replacing technologies and once we were satisfied , we decommissioned the old tech .
How did the JSE , despite its organisational challenges which I suspect would be very similar to that of a large organisation , ensure that the project realised its business objectives and planned goals ?
The IT Enterprise Architecture team led the business case . One key factor for the successful implementation of the business case was to ensure that the implementation team had an equal voice . The combination of Enterprise design together with Solution design teams removed the silo mentality
Building an integration team was key , as was having the focus of the team on managing and targeting the right business goals . Another thing that was important was having a change management approach and solid strategy around how to go about moving legacy systems across effectively , whilst ensuring the foundations were there for our teams to get the most out of the virtualised data interface once it was ready . We achieved this in a single major project implementation after the pilot phase , followed by incremental releases .
Other than data virtualisation and verification that has now been achieved following the rollout of the Denodo Platform , what other use cases is the JSE using Denodo in its day-to-day operations ?
By using the Denodo Platform , it is now comparatively much easier and less expensive for the JSE to integrate data systems and perform end-to-end testing .
Data virtualisation , complimented by other factors , has also enabled the JSE to run multiple projects
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