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Microsoft Moves into MDM with Acquisition of Stratature

At the recent Microsoft BI Conference, the company talked a lot about supporting MDM without giving any specific product details. They hinted more details would be revealed in the near future, and today's accoaccouncementt Microsoft is acquiring Stratature shows why they were reluctant to discuss details a few weeks ago.

It's interesting to note that all of the major database vendors (including IBM, Oracle and Teradata) have now acquired MDM products. Stratature is a good fit for Microsoft because it is 100 percent based on Microsoft technology including SQL Server and .NET.

Stratature's flagship product is +EDM (enterprise dimension management), which provides a centralized solution and repository for coordinating, integrating, and reconciling master data, dimensional information, and reporting hierarchies across BI and operational systems. Key product features include a web-based interface, workflow, change management and version control, role-based security, a business rules engine, and a services-based architecture.

This acquisition continues Microsoft's thrust into the enterprise. It's strategy to provide lower cost and easier to use products is particularly attractive to enterprises who don't have the resources or money to implement complex solutions from mega vendors like IBM and Oracle, and who also don't always need the vast array of functions and options offered by these latter vendors. The Stratature acquisition provides a good base of master data services on which Microsoft and its partners can build MDM applications.

  Posted by Colin White on June 7, 2007 1:33 PM |

Comments

It is very interesting to see Microsoft making noise around business intelliegence especially with their low cost provider strategy. While that makes sense for small companies, it becomes challenge for Micorsoft to market their BI products to medium and big enterprises.

Small companies typically don't have master data management challenges as medium and big companies have. Microsoft's aquisition of Stratature is an attempt to reach out to medium and big companies to sell their BI suite along with its aquired MDM product. With out MDM in the product stack, it is almost impossible to sell BI suites to any medium and large enterprises.

The big question atleast for me is ..can Microsoft get deep into this BI space with out owning enterprise application suites like ERP, CRM, SEM etc?

The blessing for Microsoft so far has been its excel product? How long it can sustain its BI dominance with excel as its defence is yet to be seen....

Chandra Kapireddy
Cheif BI Architect, D2I3 Inc.

Posted by: Chandra Kapireddy | June 16, 2007 9:34 PM

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