Andrew WhiteMDM certainly has its fair share of hype – so of course we updated our Hype Cycle for Master Data Management, 2009. Always worth a conversation, and as much a conversation piece is the position of the “dots” let alone, how they are defined and grouped. But I am sure you would enjoy this anyway.
Of particular note for me we added two new technologies: MDM Governance “tools” (a kind of oxymoron?), and MDM “aware” applications. Neither are technologies that stand alone or even exist in isolation, but very interesting developments this year. Also, “procurement MDM” is maturing and is now being hyped as supplier MDM and purchase-part MDM.
Let me know if you think we missed anything…I bet something comes to mind…
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Category: MDM Hype Tags: HDH Hype, Hype Cycle
2 responses so far ↓
1 Muniba Farid August 23, 2009 at 11:00 pm
What happened to the good old days of simple “Master Data” and “Transactional Data”… the nightmares of ERP data migration and midnight migraines of data cleansing. For those of us who have not yet fully recovered from the legacy-system-data-mapping and convincing everyone that there is more to customer master data than the mere name and address field, MDM seems a splash of cold water on the face. Reading about MDM makes me wonder will my dream of one system, single platform, single point of entry for all frontend, backend, truly enterprise, ever come true. I always thought ERP model was driving that way, but it seems that there is more focus on disintegrating the systems and re-integrating these to achieve coherence. Does it really make sense or have ERP champions given up i.e. if you cannot beat them join them!
2 Andrew White August 24, 2009 at 8:58 am
Hi Muniba,
Good points. Of course, one issue is with the definition of ERP. ERP was never meant, explicitly, to delivery “single view of master data” – its design goal was “singe view of transaction” and in that, it’s design succeeded. However, the “single view of master data” was implied. The problem was, however, that ERP a) never really delivered on its original promise, and b) before anyone could achieve that, ERP evolved into something else.
It turns out that most firms that adopted “ERP” as a “single data and process model” for their enterprise didn’t quite achieve that. In its early years ERP was not functionally mature such that most users could support the functionality needed. So many firms kept or added to their ERP solution other, “edge” solutions. So though ERP was the core transaction engine, much data, and much master data, existed outside of ERP. Then, ERP vendors evolved: some acquired those “edge” applications; some developed their own “edge” applications. In most cases these were not built on the core data and process model; and so part of the promise of ERP was undone.
So we never really did get to “one system, single platform, single point of entry for all front-end, back-end, truly enterprise,” solutions other than for a small number midsize enterprises. But, what we did do, was spend the last 20 odd years building large vertical silos of applications with their own data. With SOA, BPM, and MDM, we are now going to spend the next 20 years building horizontal layers (and services). Our maturity in IT is such that we should be able preserve the deliver of “single view of transaction” and at the same time, archive the age old promise of “single view of master data”.
Then, 20 years from now, or maybe 12-15, we can make another call…