Strategic Planning Assumptions
Research analysts at the MDM Institute annually produce a set of twelve milestones for their "MDM Road Map" to help Global 5000 enterprises focus efforts for their own large-scale, mission-critical MDM projects. For planning purposes, we thus identify 10-12 "milestones" which we then explore and publish via our MDM Alert research newsletter. This set of strategic planning assumptions presents an enlightening view of the key trends and issues facing IT organizations during 2011-12 and beyond by highlighting:
- Master data governance
- Customer data integration (CDI))
- Product information management (PIM)
- Reference data management (RDM)
The 2011-12 “MDM road map” helps Global 5000 enterprises (and IT vendors selling into this space) utilize these “strategic planning assumptions” to help focus their own road maps on large-scale and mission-critical MDM projects. During the following twelve months, we use these milestones as the focus for our analyst research in that every research report we write either confirms or evolves one or more milestones as its premise:
- Market Maturation(Consolidation & Diversification)
- During 2011-12, as MDM platforms move from 3rd generation (service-oriented architecture, single domain focus) to 4th generation (BPM-enabled, Data as a Service), the mega vendors (IBM, INFA, ORCL, SAP) will dominate while specialty solutions proliferate by industry, use case, and geography.
- Application package vendors will have re-architected such that their 2011-12 solutions are “MDM-innate” rather than “MDM-enabled”. (“MDM-innate” means they are based on MDM concepts and use/require an MDM platform; “MDM-enabled” means they are somewhat “ready” to link to an MDM system after the fact but do not require nor are they based on MDM platform).
- Master Data Governance
- Data governance of master data will remain problematic through 2011-12 as marketed solutions lack systemic rigor and E2E lifecycle support.
- Even more desirable is proactive integrated governance (rather than passive) wherein an asset-focused methodology is applied rather than the mismatch of applying project-oriented methodology.
- During 2012-13, frameworks addressing the “community” aspect of shared asset development – e.g. wikis for global corporate business vocabulary, etc. will arrive.
- Policy Hubs
- During 2011, MDM solutions providers and BPM solution providers will increasingly collide in the market as the latter acquire or build out BPM-centric MDM.
- Through 2012, however, BPM-centric MDM will suffer from BPM’s traditional focus on modeling and not executing MDM rules. By 2013, all mega MDM and BPM vendors will have overcome this dogmatic bias.
- Moreover, enterprise BPM needs to execute within governance and vice versa be able to execute MDM workflows within BPM by sharing state, process and events.
- Lastly, enterprises apply different business processes for CDI vs. PIM and the 4th generation MDM solutions need to heed. To further complicate matters, there will be an ongoing overlap (overbite?) between MDM solution providers and application package vendors – i.e., how far up (or down) the stack will MDM vendors and app vendors go? (reference SAP Enterprise MDM and Fusion MDM vs. the standalone MDM platforms).
- MDM Convergence (Multi-Entity/Domain)
- During 2011, corporate MDM platform evaluation teams will assume (and insist) that all MDM software platforms targeted on enterprise-level deployment or major role in mission critical systems fully support both PARTY and PRODUCT entity types.
- In our experience, RFIs/RFPs assume that “MDM” means “multi-domain MDM”.
- By 2012, large enterprises will also increasingly mandate that reference data management (RDM) be part of the MDM platform native entity types.
- Throughout the next two years, operational CDI hub vendors will add light PIM capabilities, and PIM vendors will add B2C PARTY capabilities.
- Universal/Pervasive MDM (MDM as a Service)
- During 2010, the vast majority of enterprises will struggle with master data governance as they attempt to evolve from level I/II (anarchy, feudalism) to III/IV (monarchy, federalism) maturity levels.
- Through 2011, major systems integrators and MDM boutiques will focus on productizing data governance frameworks while MDM software providers struggle to link governance processes with MDM hubs; concurrently, the mega MDM vendors will begin delivery of integrated active data governance.frameworks to augment their data steward consoles (passive data governance).
- By 2012-13, integrated/active data governance will increasingly be the tipping point in MDM solution evaluations; concurrently, data governance solutions will transform from project-orientation to asset lifecycle orientation.
- Budgets/Skills
- During 2011, the number of IT professionals trained in a specific MDM solution will increase 200% over the year prior, however, IT organizations and consultancies will struggle to recruit and retain MDM veterans who have actually successfully had a major role in an MDM deployment.
- During this time, enterprises will continue to spend the first year in the first year of deployment on average 3X to 4X in services vs. MDM software expenses.
- Both IT organizations and consultancies will be challenged to retain key employees.
- By 2012-13, the supply of MDM-experienced consultants will catch up with the pent-up demand of prior years and rates will fall proportionately.
- MDM Architecture & Data Models
- Through 2011-12, registry-style MDM solutions will find favor in industries where the data is legally or physically too difficult to consolidate into a physical hub (especially government, U.S. healthcare).
- Additionally, mega MDM vendors will apply the powerful hierarchy management capabilities of native registry solutions to integrate both legacy MDM hubs and enterprise-content management.
- Concurrently through 2013-14, the mega vendors will adapt the matching algorithms of their registry MDM hubs to bolster the performance and accuracy of their operational/transactional hubs matching throughput.
- Identity Resolution
- During 2011-12, the requirement for accurate and scalable matching capabilities (identity resolution) will continue to frustrate certain vendors as others monopolize such capabilities for their own MDM platforms.
- Flexible hierarchy management for both consumer households (demographics) and business entities (firmographics) will look to 3rd party trusted data sources not just for name and address cleansing but also maintenance of hierarchy relationships – despite poor quality data outside North America and Europe for this purpose.
- By 2013-14, enterprise search and related semantic technologies will help make MDM more accessible.
- Big Data, In Memory
- During 2011-12, the performance of all major aspects of base MDM functionality will benefit from the performance-enhancing capabilities of big memory configurations — from batch loading of MDM hubs to identity resolution to operational updates.
- Very large enterprises will be looking for real-time MDM flows and scaling of MDM solutions via the elasticity of Cloud-based solutions, in-memory cache databases, i.e., the next-generation of ETL/MDM.
- Business-Critical MDM
- During 2011, dogmatic spats regarding analytical vs. operational vs. collaborative MDM use cases will blur as each of these become business-critical MDM which in turn demand zero downtime.
- By 2012-13, MDM platforms will provide in-situ capabilities to change the data model, business rules, etc. … without taking the MDM services offline.
- Moreover this will impact the way master data services are syndicated and delivered … again regardless of such regular ablutions as software upgrades.
