Information Model — you definitely need it but it might be a long trip

A buzzword you should have head of for DX

The definition of information model in Wikipedia is “in general is used for models of individual things, such as facilities, buildings, process plants, etc”. I am curious that the definition of “ individual things” because my intuition is apt to “integration, inter-operationality”. So I check common information model (CIM) in Wikipedia, which is “an open standard that defines how managed elements in an IT environment are represented as a common set of objects and relationships between them”. It is anyway more closer to my intuition except that it is being limited to “an open standard”. so I could approximately say it frequently “ defines how managed elements in an IT environment are represented as a common set of objects and relationships between them”. It should currently not be limited to only an open standard.

information model of software engineering

As a software engineer, information model is generally used as “ a representation of concepts and the relationships, constraints, rules, and operations to specify data semantics for a chosen domain of discourse”. In contrast, it is differentiated from data model which organizes data elements in a system and standardizes how they relate to one another and to the properties of real-world entities. Here, data model is used within a system or a domain, but information model is all about integration or unification among different systems or domains. For example, a person name can be “first-name, family-name”, “family-name, first-name”, “first-name, abbreviation of family-name” or “ abbreviation of family-name, first-name”. In order to integrate data model among these kind of systems, a unified person ID is used to map between them. Master data management (MDM) is used to collect these different aspects of and identify the same thing. Domain-driven design (DDD) use the data model design in a domain but use the master data to unify them.

information model of inter-operationality among things

In the context of digital transformation, especially for system-on-system (SOS) , information model is generally used as the schema to promote inter-operationality among devices, building, facilities, etc. As described above, CIM is a open standard of Distributed Management Task Force. CIM allow consistent management of these managed elements, independent of their manufacturer or provider. OPC UA is a machine to machine communication protocol for industrial automation developed by the OPC Foundation. BACnet is a communication protocol for Building Automation and Control (BAC) networks that leverage the ASHRAE, ANSI, and ISO 16484–5 standard protocol. All of them are information model to promote data integration, inter-operation, and composition. You can see that it is so important for digital transformation, no one can disregard it.

the reason it might be a along trip for you

Since it is so important, every enterprise would like to realize it in its enterprise data platform. But take care of the cost and time to implement it into you data platform, not to saying it only in an abstract concept, if the change has not still come.

Currently, there are open standards for different domain, and these standards is still being developed. If you are a hardware maker, you take care of it because you want the device to connect to other unknown systems in user environments. Your hardware will have interface to open standard so it is more valuable for users. If you are a hardware vender, you want to extend hardware interface to open standard in the form of additional proxy. If you are a system integrator or a service provider, you need to use data from different devices or things. If all these things have the same standard or protocol, good luck for you.

But not all them have appliance to open standards, so you only can not use them out of box. You have no way to do for OT even you own power in IT. I think it is the main barrier for most of the current systems to merge OT and IT. But these issues have been recognized and gradually solved.

So please keep patient for implementing you enterprise information model.