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Master Data Integration or Master Data Management?

I have heard a lot of presentations on master data management (MDM) over the last few weeks and judging from the questions being asked by the audience there is a lot of confusion about this topic. People constantly confuse MDM applications with MDM technology and techniques.

As I have pointed out before in this blog, in any data integration project there are applications, techniques and technologies. Data integration applications solve business problems using one or more data integration techniques (data consolidation, data federation, data propagation, changed data capture, data transformation). These techniques are implemented using one of more data integration technologies (EII, ETL, EAI, EDR, ECM, etc.).

MDM is really a data integration application. Within MDM there are sub-areas like customer MDM (often called customer data integration, which is unfortunate!), product MDM, financial MDM and so forth. These applications employ data integration technologies and techniques to solve business problems. These applications add value by supporting/providing the business semantics and metadata that are specific to the business problem/area being addressed.

A generic MDM product can be thought of as an application development environment for deploying MDM applications. A more specific customer MDM product provides a generic MDM application environment plus pre-built templates and patterns that address the management of customer data.

The only company so far that seems to have made the distinction between applications and technology is IBM who talk about master data management (the application) and master data integration (the technology).

People also confuse MDM for transactions and MDM for analytics. SAP, for example, has an MDM solution that is more geared to transaction processing, whereas the Hyperion MDM product is intended for business intelligence. This confusion is somewhat similar to what happened in the early days of CRM. As we have since found out, the transaction and BI CRM environments are intertwined and you need CRM in both areas. The same is true for MDM.

  Posted by Colin White on October 3, 2005 6:34 PM |

Comments

Interesting post, I fully agree with this classification.

On IBM, the risk for their customers is to get a specific MDM application for each of their Master Data: Products, Customers.. Actually, they acquired different technologies that should be difficult to unify.

What about a generic MDM that could be adapted to each of these issues ?

Posted by: Christophe Barriolade | October 10, 2005 12:02 PM

I'm not sure I agree with the notion that IBM is the *only* company that has drawn the distinction you refer to. I can think of others.

Posted by: Dennis Howlett | October 17, 2005 7:28 PM

I am doing some research on MDM and these posting were very helpful. I was wondering if anyone knows what products MicroSoft and Oracle have that compete with SAP's MDM and Global Data Synchronization solutions?

Posted by: chris | October 18, 2005 2:17 PM

Thanks for threading the needle in the difference between MDM and MDI. Can you differentiate, if possible, the difference between those two and master reference data management? I have a 15 page white paper sitting on my desk that talks about it, and is mysteriously silent on MDM or MDI.

Posted by: Frank Dravis | October 19, 2005 12:41 PM

This is a thoughtful and timely article from Colin, since the hype around MDM is becoming deafening. Sadly this is not yet matched by a general clear understanding of what MDM actually is. From early work at Shell and Unilever, KALIDO MDM evolved and was released in 2003, so I feel qualified to comment on a market that barely existed two years ago but now has no less than 60 vendors claiming some form of MDM capability, at least in Powerpoint or whitepaper form (the IT industry's favourite formats when something seemingly new pops up). Colin's classification is helpful to try and make sense of this rapidly evolving market - for the record, KALIDO MDM is a "generic MDM product" i.e. it is not specific to one form of master data such as customer and product. It is indeed a "application development environment for deploying MDM applications" in this definition.

Posted by: Andy Hayler | October 31, 2005 3:30 AM

I have talked to several of my prospects. Each and everyone of them say that they are yet to find out one holistic solution for all forms of master data and hence they are segregating MDM according to the Master data verticals. MDM for Products, MDM for Customer masters, MDM for Vendor Masters, MDM for Material Masters and so on

Posted by: Bikash | January 16, 2006 12:06 AM

hey guys , im looking to do a presentation on mdm and service oriented architecture , so if any of u ve some vital information tat could be of any help to me plz mail me at rohith.veerajappa@gmail.com

Posted by: Rohith | March 2, 2008 11:58 AM

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