Together, big data and analytics have tremendous potential to improve the way we use precious resources, to provide more personalized services, and to protect ourselves from unexpected and ill-intentioned activities. To fully use big data and analytics, an organization needs a system of insight. This is an ecosystem where individuals can locate and access data, and build visualizations and new analytical models that can be deployed into the IT systems to improve the operations of the organization. The data that is most valuable for analytics is also valuable in its own right and typically contains personal and private information about key people in the organization such as customers, employees, and suppliers.

Although universal access to data is desirable, safeguards are necessary to protect people's privacy, prevent data leakage, and detect suspicious activity.

The data reservoir is a reference architecture that balances the desire for easy access to data with information governance and security. The data reservoir reference architecture describes the technical capabilities necessary for a system of insight, while being independent of specific technologies. Being technology independent is important, because most organizations already have investments in data platforms that they want to incorporate in their solution. In addition, technology is continually improving, and the choice of technology is often dictated by the volume, variety, and velocity of the data being managed.

A system of insight needs more than technology to succeed. The data reservoir reference architecture includes description of governance and management processes and definitions to ensure the human and business systems around the technology support a collaborative, self-service, and safe environment for data use.

The data reservoir reference architecture was first introduced in Governing and Managing Big Data for Analytics and Decision Makers, REDP-5120, which is available at:

This IBM® Redbook publication, Designing and Operating a Data Reservoir, builds on that material to provide more detail on the capabilities and internal workings of a data reservoir.

This book was produced by a team of specialists from around the world working at the International Technical Support Organization, Poughkeepsie Center.

Mandy Chessell CBE FREng CEng FBCS is an IBM Distinguished Engineer, Master Inventor, and member of the IBM Academy of Technology. Her current role is the Chief Architect for Information Solutions in the IBM Analytics Group CTO office. She leads the design of common information management patterns for different industries and solutions. This includes the Data Reservoir, Next Best Action solution, and the strategy for Information Governance.

In earlier roles Mandy led the development of new features for IBM CICS®, Encina, TxSeries, WebSphere® and InfoSphere® products. She has over 50 issued patents worldwide in the fields of transaction processing, event management, business process management, model driven development, and information management.

Outside of IBM, Mandy is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a visiting professor at the University of Sheffield, UK. Identified in 2000 as one of MIT Technology Review's hundred young people most likely to make significant 21st Century technical innovation, she is distinguished as the first woman to win a Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal. Mandy has an honorary fellowship of the Institution for Engineering Designers (IED) and a honorary doctorate of science from the University of Plymouth. In 2015, Mandy was awarded a CBE in the Queen's New Years Honours List for services to engineering.

Mandy's numerous published titles include Patterns of Information Management, a book on design patterns for better information architecture and management. These patterns form the basic language and component model for the data reservoir architecture. More information about Mandy's publications can be found here:

Nigel L Jones is an Information Solutions Architect based at IBM Hursley within the IBM Analytics Group. His current role is working on data reservoir capabilities and information governance end to end including Hadoop, and has a focus on open source technologies. He has been working with IBM master data products for the last 10 years supporting the development of new capabilities and integration into solutions. Before that, he worked extensively with IBM voice solutions. Nigel has a degree in Physics and Computer Science from the University of Manchester.

Jay Limburn MBCS CITP, is an IBM Senior Technical Staff Member at the IBM Software Development Laboratory in Hursley UK. Jay works within the IBM Analytics organization and is the lead architect for Master Data Governance and consumption. In this role, he is responsible for ensuring that master data can be delivered efficiently to business users and for accelerate IBM clients’ ROI. Jay is a recognized expert on data governance and strategies that allow organizations to extract value from their data quality projects. He has presented at conferences worldwide on these topics, and as a UK Senior Inventor holds 12 patents in these areas.

David Radley is an IBM Analytics Information Solution Architect in the IBM UK Hursley lab. He has over 25 years of experience in IT, with the last 10 years in Information Management. In his role, David promotes and develops information architecture to underpin analytics and EMM solutions, by putting master data at the heart. David has published best practices in these areas. David is keen to promote innovation and has filed two patents with IBM. David holds a degree in Physics from Birmingham University.

Kevin Shank is a Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM) and the Chief Architect for Metadata, Governance, and Semantic Technologies for the IBM InfoSphere product group. He has recently been a principal contributor to the efforts to develop the DataWorks cloud products. Kevin was the original chief architect and team lead for the InfoSphere Metadata Server, and one of the principal architects for the InfoSphere Information Server platform itself. Kevin's technical background includes expertise in Object-Oriented Design, Distributed Systems, Software Modeling, and structures for representing Metadata and Information (EMF/RDF/etc). Kevin has numerous patents and publications, and has a BSEE from The University of Tennessee, as well as MS and PhD degrees in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University.

Thanks to the following people for their contributions to this project:

Philip Monson, Redbooks® brand Software lead
International Technical Support Organization, Poughkeepsie NY

Martin Borrett, Director of the IBM Institute for Advanced Security Europe
IBM Hursley

Chris Nott, CTO Analytics, UKI
IBM London

Chris Grote, Big Data Architect for Banking & Financial Markets
IBM London

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