Sometimes, schedule-wise, it's either feast or famine. You've been there. You RSVP to your spouse's colleague's wedding, only to find out that a really close buddy is having a "Welcome Spring!" party, complete with on-site facials and Orange Velvet martinis. Damn!

I'd been mildly miffed that I couldn't go to Informatica World in Vegas. I'd been on their board of advisors in the past, and have presented at the conference for the last several years. But this year the Data Governance conference came calling and I'm booked that week. And now that Informatica is officially in the MDM space, I'm downright vexed that I'll miss the party.

Yes, Informatica just added identity resolution to its functional portfolio with the acquisition of Identity Systems, making it a bona-fide MDM player. Informatica has danced with MDM in the past, a few years ago buying a stake in Purisma (recently acquired by D&B) and partnering with other vendors offering MDM functionality, most notably Oracle and Teradata.

Don't get me wrong--identity resolution doesn't an MDM product make. But reconciling disparate information into a common identifier by applying sophisticated algorithmic processing is a core component. In our CDI book we describe eight core functions of MDM processing (see Chapter 7), and explain that most robust MDM solutions provide:

• A single point of data retrieval


• Consistent value representation


• An accurate and repeatable means of matching and merging data


• A repository of clean, reliable data


• Support of multiple data sources

Identity Systems arguably has a story to tell for each of these capabilities. Evan and I gave the keynote at the company's Horizons '07 user event in New York last October and found the audience a sophisticated group with high-impact business problems. Anti money laundering? No problem! Person-of-interest recognition, anyone?

Ivan Chong, General Manager of Informatica's Data Quality business unit agrees. "Identity resolution is not MDM, but it is an important component of any MDM technology stack," Ivan says. "The highly scalable and cross language search and match provided by Identity Systems has become the de-facto standard for identity resolution within MDM as well as CDI and CRM applications via OEM agreements with Oracle, Siperian and Purisma (D&B) and for customers building their own applications requiring matching."

The acquisition is another testimonial to the value of MDM functionality to vendors' incumbent product features. (Microsoft's acquisition of Stratature last June was the bellweather for this.) As with Microsoft, not only does Informatica offer MDM functionality to the market, its promise is as much in improving Informatica's core set of functions as it is adding to the solutions suite.

MDM capabilities often serve as core functional components for a range of technology processing, from de-duplication to rules management and beyond. Informatica will benefit from this core functionality that can pervade the company's different product offerings.

It's a fact of business that trusted and authoritative information is still largely unavailable when and where it's needed. Integration of data with applications remains fraught. Informatica offers data linage and audit tracking, data migration services, data quality and metadata, and now identity resolution. They're not only at the MDM party, they're moving from room to room as a well-dressed VIP. Cheers!

Technorati tag: Informatica, Identity Systems, Master Data Management, MDM, Customer Data Integration