And Then There Were Five
The landscape of the MDM hub vendors has shifted quite a bit in the last month. Siperian has been acquired by Informatica, and Initiate Systems has been acquired by IBM.
What does this mean for the average Fortune 1000 company buying MDM technology? Not as much as you might think.
On the mega-vendor side, they’ve still got Oracle, IBM and SAP to choose from. IBM, obviously, now has three MDM platforms to offer (InfoSphere MDM Server, InfoSphere MDM Server for PIM, and Initiate Systems) where they used to have two. But Oracle has three as well, and will soon have four: Customer Data Hub and Universal Customer Master for customer MDM, PIM Data Hub for product MDM, and Fusion MDM Hub, Release 1 of which is supposed to ship later in 2010. And SAP continues to forge ahead with improved versions of their NetWeaver MDM product. So the recent consolidation doesn’t seem to have affected the mega-vendors that much – “the big get bigger”, you might say.
Outside of the “Big Three”, I continue to think Siperian being acquired by Informatica is a good thing, for Siperian’s customers, for the product roadmap, and for the market as a whole. Informatica brings a lot of expertise in integration and data quality to the table, and its Identity Systems matching engine and Address Doctor data cleansing tools are very good at what they do. It will be interesting to see how Informatica integrates Siperian as a company and as a product into itself, but I have a lot of confidence that they’ll do it well.
All this does pose an interesting issue for Oracle, however. Oracle made a big commitment to Informatica in its Fusion MDM Hub by including Informatica components for matching and cleansing on an OEM basis. But by buying Siperian, Informatica has declared itself a direct competitor in the MDM market. So there’s a lot of speculation as to what Oracle will do about this. In the short term, it may be too late to pull the Informatica components out of Fusion MDM Release 1.0, but longer term, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Informatica components either replaced or deemphasized, perhaps with an open architecture approach allowing other third party identity resolution / matching and address cleansing products to be plugged in, in place of Informatica’s. Although there’s also been a lot of speculation about Oracle buying Informatica.
D&B/Purisma remains an interesting player. Disclosure: prior to starting Hub Designs, I worked for D&B. I saw D&B’s launch of a hosted version of Purisma last fall and was impressed by it. For a lot of situations, Purisma’s product can be a good solution. So even though I wouldn’t call Purisma a full-fledged master data management solution, it’s worth keeping an eye on because it does a great job of integrating internal customer data with D&B’s external reference data. And having it available on a hosted basis can be very helpful.
So the bottom line is, where there used to be six players, now there are five. Of course, the MDM market being as hot as it is, everyone and their brother claims to be an MDM solution, but these are the five products that I pay the most attention to, and that we see the most in the marketplace. What do you think? Please let us know by commenting here.
Trip Report on Fall 2008 MDM Summit
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The Fall 2008 MDM Summit conference ended a couple of days ago. Here’s a quick trip report summarizing it.
I’ve attended the last six MDM Summit events in the U.S. and have spoken at five of them. I always enjoy them, because of the great job that SourceMedia and The MDM Institute do, because I enjoy seeing everyone I’ve come to know in the MDM world, and because of the new people I meet and the new ideas I pick up.
This year, I arrived via the Acela Express train from Boston, went straight to the Hilton New York, and attended Evan Levy’s pre-conference workshop on “Best Practices for MDM Delivery: Lessons from the Trenches”.
Most people who attended one of the pre-conference workshop came to the Experts and Analysts Panel, with Jill Dyché, Aaron Zornes and myself, moderated by Jim Ericson, Editorial Director of DM Review. The panel was a lot of fun. I’ve known Aaron for several years and continue to appreciate the quality and depth of his analysis. Jill’s insights were right on the money as usual, and Jim did a great job moderating and guiding the discussion.
After the opening night reception in the exhibit hall, I ran into a friend and fellow consultant, Mani Kumar Manda from Rhapsody Technologies. We went to dinner with Christopher Dwight, Director MDM Field Strategy from Oracle’s Master Data Management team. We had a great time, and talked about Oracle’s Hyperion Data Relationship Management solution and the upcoming Oracle Applications Users Group COLLABORATE 09 conference. Mani and I are involved in planning the MDM track of that conference.
The next morning, I attended Aaron Zornes’ keynote “Milestones on the MDM Road for 2008-2009″, which I particularly like as a way to stay current on developments in MDM over the past six months.
Tony Fisher from DataFlux gave a great talk on “Stop Kicking the Tires and Start Your Master Data Engine”. I first met Tony at the Fall 2006 event, and I chatted briefly with him afterwards about Hub Solution Designs’ interest in becoming a DataFlux partner.
Next was Pascal Laik, VP of MDM Product Strategy at Oracle. I’ve known Pascal for several years, since he took over for Ronda Krier in that position. Pascal laid out Oracle’s strengths in the manufacturing, telecommunications, retail and financial services industries, and included an interesting but apocryphal story about the “Battle of Ulm”, where the Russian army showed up 12 days late for the battle due to the difference between the Gregorian and Julian calendars.
Bence Gazdag also spoke about Oracle’s internal MDM efforts, and I later bumped into my friend Bill Miller, Oracle’s Director & Global Solution Owner for Data Quality Management, who was supposed to deliver that part of the presentation.
The last keynote before lunch was by Chris Lucas from D&B and Kim Fahey, Senior Director of Information Architecture at R.R. Donnelley. Kim did a great job describing Donnelley’s MDM journey and the growing value they’ve gotten from their implementation of Purisma.
I had a quick lunch, then headed off to a session on “Best Practices in DG, DQ & Identity Resolution” by Alex Bentley from Initiate Systems and Scott Drummond from Grange Insurance. This one I really enjoyed – down-to-earth delivery by Scott, and lots of good “lessons learned”.
I spent a fair amount of time Monday in the exhibit hall, talking to the different vendors, gathering more information, and seeing old friends working for various companies. I went to the end-of-day reception again, then headed out to a great dinner at the Blue Water Grill with Initiate Systems.
Tuesday was a bit of a blur. I had a couple of meetings in the morning, then went to lunch with Siperian at a great Venetian restaurant named Remi near the Hilton.
In the afternoon, I caught the “Global B2B Hierarchy Management in the High-Tech Industry” session by Jesse Weissman from EMC. Jesse did a great job describing the challenges and corresponding benefits of managing complex corporate hierarchies in EMC’s MDM environment.
The last session I caught was Eric Hansen from Nationwide Insurance, talking about “Data Governance and MDM – The Nationwide Experience”. This one was very well done too, with lots of good insights into the process of developing a vision for data governance in a large-scale Financial MDM project.
Aaron Zornes would want me to remind you about the virtual MDM Summit, which starts on Nov. 11th.
I don’t know the dates yet for next spring’s MDM Summit, but it’s usually in San Francisco and it’s one of my favorite events of the year.
If I met you, spoke to you, had lunch or dinner with you, or learned new things from you – thank you for making the Fall 2008 MDM Summit such a great experience!
Perspectives on the MDM Market
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In this article, we’ll give some perspective on the current state of the Master Data Management (MDM) market.
Well-meaning skeptics have raised doubts about whether MDM initiatives have long-term viability, sufficient ROI or in fact, are just another system. This skepticism is, of course, understandable.
Every major new type of enterprise technology, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) goes through an adoption cycle, with early enthusiasm leading to the “Trough of Disillusionment” and eventually, the “Plateau of Productivity”. For more information, see Gartner’s definition of Hype Cycles.
And if you look at the history of MDM solutions over the past few years, the space was very fragmented, initially populated mainly by data quality and matching vendors.
But more recently, some innovations have come together in the MDM space so that it’s starting to offer real value to mainstream companies, not just early adopters.
There have been several innovations on the IT architecture front, such as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), plus new analytics capabilities, improved tools to facilitate data stewardship and more mature MDM hub platforms. All this adds up to a fast-changing landscape.
To add to the momentum, the top enterprise software players (like Oracle, IBM and SAP) have jumped feet first onto the MDM bandwagon, joining the best-of-breed players (like Purisma, Siperian and Initiate Systems) who helped launch the space, giving rise to a whole new ecosystem of system integrators, data service providers and an increasing trend toward global solutions beyond North America.
This growing ecosystem is driving significant growth for the MDM industry as a whole. There are exciting frontiers ahead.
For example, we’re already seeing some business process outsourcing relating to the creation and maintenance of an organization’s master data to an external provider.
At Hub Solution Designs, we’re excited to be part of the MDM wave of adoption from the very beginning. We see more growth, better solutions, and more organizations succeeding with MDM every day.
Please use the Comment button to let us know what you think about the trend towards outsourced data stewardship.
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.
