Took a briefing from a vendor that sports an MDM offering, that historically was oriented around product master data (MDM of Product Data) but today has a credible vision for multiple domain MDM (including Customer Data). During the briefing we talked about an observation that the vendor described to me. A prospect of theirs had reported to them that their offering looks a lot more flexible than a competitors, that looked more specific to their industry/data domain. The trade off was one of flexibility (“I can master and manage any master data object”) versus efficiency (“This is modeled to a specific industry and data model”). The former requires services of some kind to configure the software; the latter requires less configuration; in both cases data translation and cleaning may be required anyway.
This trade off is a real big issue in MDM land right now. In fact it is an old problem – it is the same as the best of breed or niche vendor versus the suite or generalist vendor issue that we have seen played out numerous times in the IT space. But is MDM land any different to – say – ERP? Will large suite vendors eventually consume the whole market and will best of breed or niche vendors disappear? Did ERP destroy SCM, CRM, Manufacturing, Procurement, and PLM markets? The answer is definitely “no” but such consolidation changes markets.
Will MDM follow the same pattern? And if so, over what time frame? Well, from where I sit, the answer is “probably yes, but over a very long time.”
Every time I get the chance to take a broad look at the market I see more complexity. I see more complexity that is defined by the user (not the vendor). Users are smart people; they find ever more ways to use technology to further their efforts. As I wrap up a Magic Quadrant analysis for MDM of Product Data I see more complexity;
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more ways in which users seek to master product data
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more data included in the mastery
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more business processes and stake holders being involved
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more enterprises being involved
And worse, the realities of legacy and brown-field sites means that however effective the dream of vision for MDM (or anything, for that matter), the pathway to get there is very different for EVERY firm and so that in and of itself adds another source of complexity.
So I think that there is a lot of room in the MDM market (it is not a single market but really it’s a composite of several – but let’s not go there here) is large enough and broad enough that best of breed and generalist have plenty of room to grow. And if to prove the point, a growing number of users are describing to me (in the last 6 to 9 months) how they are integrating 2 or more MDM systems (including a best of breed and generalist) in an overall MDM strategy!
2 responses so far ↓
1 Winston Chen // Apr 15, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Andrew, I think your question is more about platforms than vendors. Many mega vendor have multiple platforms for MDM. It comes down to, is it possible to have a single technology platform that supports all the intersections of data domains and industries and use cases? Is there enough commonality between, say, product and customer, for the same MDM software to address both? I think the answer is no and I agree with your point about complexity in the market. So it is not surprising to see multiple MDM platforms in the same company and I think we’ll see more and more of that.
I’d also bet that governance and stewardship will become a dominant requirement, rather than the back-end, lights-out, infrastructure oriented type of MDM that has the lion-share of the market today. Backend MDM gives you consistency, but I’d argue that consistency and quality are mutually exclusive. Consistently bad data is no better than inconsistently bad data. To tackle the quality issue once and for all requires business ownership of master data. And to do that the solution cannot operate in the backend any more.
2 Andrew White // Apr 16, 2009 at 8:58 am
Winston, thanks for the post. I don’t quite agree however with your first point; after all, what is a ‘platform’? That term can mean many things. You clarify your point though – with the “can one vendor” or technology meet all the requirements? I would accept that some vendors are taking a “platform” approach in that they are building out a low level or core or infrastructural level solution (foundation?) and from there, they plan to build “up” to meet all the complex requirements that take place close to the business processes related to the master data. And that other vendors have more of a vertical stack (deep business process or business context, but narrow “foundation”). But this is just what I said, without the use of the term platform. The former is a generalist approach (one ‘platform’ to do it all) and the latter is a niche approach.
My current thinking is that a) MDM is big and ugly, b) it is only going to grow in importance to many, many firms even if they don’t use the term, and c) there is enough business to be had (and problems are big and ugly enough) that there will be plenty of opportunities for both segments to grow, and even co-habit.
I do agree with your second point. I think we are beginning to see tools named, by vendors, “governance tools” that are targeted at this master data domain independent process. If you will, this becomes a “master data management tool for all the master data management tools across the business”. Put another way, this will include (my favorite statement) a “meta-master data model”.
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