Our MDM Partnership Strategy

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At Hub Solution Designs, our MDM partnership strategy is pretty straightforward.

We are a management & technology consulting firm focused exclusively on Master Data Management and Data Governance.  Our strategy is to partner with all of the leading MDM vendors, because there is no “one-size fits all” solution and businesses need options here.  So our strategy is to provide unbiased solutions that best meet the needs of our clients.

Partnering with all of the MDM vendors is an ambitious strategy, but as Teddy Roosevelt said, “Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing”.

And pragmatically speaking, as trusted advisors who bring a tested methodology and sound best practices to bear on every MDM engagement,  we think the question of which consulting firm or systems integrator you select is, if anything, more important than which MDM hub platform you select.

So here’s where we stand today with the three MDM “mega-vendors” (Oracle, IBM and SAP) and the three smaller MDM vendors (Siperian, Initiate Systems and Purisma/D&B).

Oracle: We joined the Oracle Partner Network as a worldwide partner in November 2007. Several of our team members have extensive experience with Oracle’s growing portfolio of MDM solutions, and have driven successful implementations of them at financial services institutions, software companies, and high tech firms. We have good relationships with Oracle’s MDM product strategy team and with Oracle sales teams around the country. We’re also involved in the independent Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) and, as part of its Education Committee, helped plan the MDM track of OAUG’s upcoming COLLABORATE 08 conference.

IBM: We joined IBM’s PartnerWorld program in September 2007, based on knowing several people from DWL (acquired by IBM in 2005) and other parts of IBM.  We think that IBM is going to do very well with companies in their “sweet spot” (certain industries like financial services and companies that are historically heavy users of IBM hardware or software).  So we’ll keep looking for opportunities to grow our client relationships, our team and our expertise in the area of IBM’s MDM solutions.

SAP: another slow starter, with an MDM solution that was originally very centered around the “Product” domain. But SAP’s NetWeaver MDM solution continues to evolve and develop. And SAP also has a strong “sweet spot” of companies (global manufacturers, consumer packaged goods companies and European-headquartered firms), and a large installed base of SAP applications users who are pretty loyal when it comes to considering an MDM solution from SAP. We’re just about to join the SAP partner program at the Associate Partner level to start, and have just brought on a new team member with significant experience in Master Data Management and SAP.

We also continue to be impressed by the smaller MDM software vendors.  We think we’re still in the early stages of MDM market development and there’s still room for a “best of breed” MDM strategy at this point.

The Siperian MDM Hub is a robust product, and is able to identify and manage relationships among multiple types of enterprise data, such as customers, products or accounts, across multiple applications and lines of business. The company has done very well in the financial services and pharmaceutical & life sciences industries. Siperian had a more than 300% growth rate from 2006 to 2007, and just received a $25 million round of financing in January, to support additional expansion in Europe and further development of its channels and products. The Siperian customers we’ve talked to really like the product, and the Siperian people we work with are top notch. We’ve been an approved Siperian partner since October 2007, and are planning to attend the Siperian user group and partner summit in San Francisco in early April.

Initiate Systems filed with the SEC to go public in November 2007. The company was founded in 1995 and has more than 140 customers in production, in industries such as health care, financial services, public sector, retail and technology, with marquee customers such as Microsoft, Intuit, Capital One, Countrywide, Wells Fargo, Humana, Hyatt Hotels, Barnes & Noble, CVS, and SuperValu. We signed a partnership agreement with Initiate in December 2007, after talking with some Initiate people and customers at the Fall 2007 MDM Summit conference in New York. The company’s technology has some very interesting capabilities, and we’re impressed with what we’ve seen to date of the product, the company and its people.

Purisma (a D&B company): Prior to starting Hub Solution Designs in mid-2007, I worked for Dun & Bradstreet for three years in its Global Alliance team, managing D&B’s strategic alliance with Oracle. I was part of various CDI and MDM related teams and initiatives within D&B, and was one of the few people from D&B to attend the first public CDI-MDM Summit conference in Spring 2006.  After being an internal MDM evangelist at D&B for several years, I was pleased to see the company acquire Purisma in November 2007. The acquisition was a good strategic fit for both companies, allowing D&B to become more of a player in the Customer Data Integration (CDI) and MDM marketplace, and giving Purisma the chance to extend its market reach.  We’re not formal partners with D&B/Purisma yet, but we’re working on it, and in the meantime, our network of informal relationships within both companies continues to grow.

After establishing and growing our relationships with all of these companies, we’re listening carefully to what our clients and the market as a whole are telling us about their relative strengths & weaknesses, who has the best product for which situation in which industries, and who’s growing their market share over time.  We think there will be some additional consolidation in MDM, as in every other part of the enterprise software market, and we hope to continue as thought leaders by being able to look “around the corner” at what’s coming two to five years down the road.

We’ve got our eye on other large enterprise software players, like Microsoft, salesforce.com and Google, that are not yet really playing in the MDM space in an organized way.

Our formal & informal relationships with Oracle, IBM, SAP, Siperian, Initiate Systems and Purisma/D&B will continue to develop and grow. Our clients benefit from our solid methodology, approaches and best practices, plus the processes, procedures and data governance that we help you wrap around these MDM products, regardless of which vendor you select. Please review our service offerings for Educational Workshops, Readiness Assessment, Software Selection, and Business Case Creation to get an idea of how we help clients map out and execute a winning MDM strategy.

The vendors bring great technology and we bring great people with broad domain expertise.