Is MDM Dead?
By Mike Shultz, Infoglide Software CEO
Andrew White of Gartner recently posed a question about whether master data management (MDM) is dead. He didn’t actually suggest that the demise of master data management is imminent. He was challenging whether our current terminology adequately clarifies the current reality about MDM and associated product areas.
Certainly the terms describing many markets and types of products are being associated with MDM. Jackie Roberts of DATAForge pointed out that the definition of MDM now seems to include “data integrity, data quality, entity resolution, matching, data integration, governance, metrics and analysis.”
While entity resolution was mentioned in her list, our obsessive focus on entity resolution (aka identity resolution) leads to the conclusion that, rather than being subsumed, its role is growing. Wayne Eckerson at TDWI seems to agree that identity resolution is a critical component of the recent MDM acquisitions. In his post about the acquisitions by Informatica and IBM of Siperian and Initiate Systems, respectively, he described the two transactions this way:
“You could say that Siperian is mostly MDM, but with identity resolution and other capabilities, whereas Initiate is mostly about identity resolution, but with MDM and other capabilities.”
Identity resolution is becoming an integral part of many product areas. Within MDM itself, creating a single-entity view is best done with an identity resolution engine. Data mining is greatly enhanced by the addition of entity resolution. Dan Power of Hub Solution Designs wrote about how key identity resolution is to data matching. We’ve talked about how social CRM can resolve identities of individuals across multiple disparate data sources using identity resolution, as well as “rationalize multiple variations and errors and anomalies that block finding existing customers within their systems”.
Although identity resolution technology has been years in the making, it has only recently risen into the consciousness of most analysts and customers. Because of its ability to bring enhanced clarity to ambiguous data, advanced identity resolution is now beginning to have a significant impact across many data-centered disciplines.
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March 4th, 2010 at 10:42 am
I think reports of MDM’s demise are greatly exaggerated!
Great article, Mike - and you make some very good points about the increasing role of identity resolution within master data management. In my opinion, we’ll see the next generation of MDM platforms placing an even higher emphasis on fast, accurate identity resolution.
Building a master data repository with accurate, complete, timely and consistent customer data requires spot-on identity resolution capabilities. Anything less, and you’re matching apples to oranges when building the “golden records” in your MDM hub - and then you’ll be propagating those mistakes all over the enterprise.
So it’s good to see customers and other analysts realizing how important identity resolution is to MDM’s future.