Siperian’s (now Informatica) Data Director (similar name, interestingly) is a nod to this opportunity though Siperian developed their product mainly as a primary UI interface for MDM.  MDM systems need UIs for operational use; MDM and other systems need separate tools (where necessary) for “data stewardship”.  As such Informatica may yet have to reconcile one or other approach.

The mega-vendors, SAP, Oracle, and IBM, have some vision and/or some capability in this area but nothing as far along  or packaged as Kalido.  Watch this space however; things can’t stay this way for long.  Look for more “data governance” applications targeted at MDM as well as more generalized ‘any old data’ governance.

Until self-styled MDM offerings mature to include such capability, larger and more complex MDM implementations, often supported by two or more master data stores (including business applications and business intelligence), will add to their footprint a “data governance” component to manage the “hub of hubs”.

But, before that, I wanted to share with you one particular item of interest.  This is not so much research but  more an observation that I make since I have followed SAP closely for some time.  The observation is this: About 3 years into SAP’s NetWeaver strategy (some years before the Business Objects acquisition), SAP finally got its NetWeaver vision sorted it.  What I mean to say is that the SAP vision had a singular hook, a goal, and end point, and that end point was called, SAP NetWeaver.  It didn’t matter if you spoke with executive leadership, ERP sales reps, small or mid size enterprise people, application folks, the end, their future, was always going to hinge on the success of SAP NetWeaver.  SAP NetWeaver was going to make everything work.  It was a credible goal, one that SAP worked many thousands of hours on honing.  SAP NetWeaver MDM was at the heard of this vision (which was a good thing, in my view).  Single view of critical master data objects, across an enterprise, seems pretty fundamental to me – no matter what the business goals.

Today, post the Business Objects acquisition, that singular vision does not seem to be there.  As I sat in the Key Note of the SAP Insider event, I noted that almost every key user segment of SAP’s large footprint now had something visionary on offer.  If you were a Business Objects user, you had a road map.  If you were a business application user, you had a road map.  If you were into content management, or database management, or analytics, or MDM, or anything, you had something special for you.  SAP NetWeaver is still in the picture of course, it has to be, but it is no longer the single rallying cry that comes from SAP.  I would paraphrase the visible shift as “from Nirvana to Something for Everyone”.  This is not a negative criticism; it is an observation.  What this means for SAP clients, and SAP itself, remains the playground of gossip, and good research.  But I thought the observation worth sharing. 

What do you observe?

*SAP Insider is conducted independently by WIS, publisher of SAP Insider, with permission from SAP AG. WIS is not affiliated with SAP AG.

Last week I had the good fortune of attending SAP’s annual Sapphire event in Orlando.  Other than some warm weather, and some pretty exciting thunder storms, there were lots to see and hear at the event.  As usual SAP put on a good “show” with lots of content, customer speakers, and product updates.  Some of the more interesting tidbits of information I found included: 

• SAP Business Suite 7 (released worldwide May 2009) – specifically Product Lifecycle Planning (PLM) was demoed and this showed, I thought quite nicely, the concept of embedding analytics into the business process (and resulting application).  Too many vendors think that “embedding analytics” means a stand alone application for “analytics” which is OK, but not really what users want.  The functionality seemed flexible and could easily be extended to other application domains and processes, such as ERP, CRM, Procurement, and SCM.  I believe that is what SAP will do looking forward
• Sustainability – SAP unveiled/updated the attendees with its own efforts in this important area (how SAP the vendor is monitoring its carbon footprint, and reducing it) as well as how it plans to help its customers/users manage and reduce their own footprints.  The problems in this area are many and can be boiled down to:
  • data (do we have what we need to determine footprint)
  • scope (what and whose footprint are we talking about anyway)
  • legislation/regulation (external, possibly even silly, requirements to report and even do things)
  • business case (trying to relate this effort with the pursuit of profit is complicated as it is)

SAP’s strategy is not to bet on any one approach across these 4 dimensions of complexity.  Instead the vendor has created a nice playground in which its customers, partners, and other interested stakeholders can participate by providing input to SAP.  Using this web site you can all vote as to where you think SAP should focus.  At least we won’t get dinged for chasing SAP now; SAP can blame the lack of, or specific responses from, the community for the decisions (or lack of).  In all seriousness though, SAP is making efforts and this should be looked at positively.  However, I myself would like to know more about the model they use (the scope, data) in order to understand how well SAP understands this problem – and growing opportunity.

• SAP MDM – strategy was updated, expanding their efforts related to governance – a very thorny topic for MDM users (from all vendors).  SAP has several “products” in the MDM arena and it is making efforts to align the product naming conventions that come from, more recently, a more evolved product strategy.  Watch this space for news on this (well, watch our web site at www.gartner.com).
• Hasso Platner, the Chairman of the Supervisory Board, presented for an hour on a new in-memory database design that seems to show promise increased performance over other database designs.  The whole key note for day 2 was spent on explaining to attendees how new and powerful this database design was, over all-comers.  No need to wonder what this was all about.  Guess what’s gonna happen soon…
• SAP demoed their new SAP Business Objects Explorer.  Now this product looks very interesting.  It looked like a flexible data mining-cum-data analysis tool.  It is designed to sit across lots of data stores and provide an English language search capability that automatically aggregates and/or presents data intuitively to users.  Imaging searching for “customers”, “region”, “revenue”, “last 3 years”, “top 3” (or something like that) and the within seconds (speed as a key characteristic) a grid is populated with sales data for the last 3 years sorted by customer and region.  Of course, the tool is bounded by the accuracy and effective integrity of the data and stores (no “single view” results in crappy output).  More interesting, the paradigm (over used word, sure) that the application offers is new; the problem I have is that users do not, yet, think or work this way.  During the demo I thought to myself, “meandering BI” in that the demo implied that business users sat around in front of the screen all day just toying with ways in which to interest with their data.  This was unfair (I figured afterward) in that the demo    Molson Coors has been written about on their use of the product. 

Other than that, the time was spent in various 1-1 meetings with SAP executives and customers.  The event was well received and helpful in building out research positions.

My overall highlight however was the pleasure I had in attending a breakfast session hosted by Backoffice Associates.  These guys are a small vendor that focuses on data migration and data governance in and around the SAP environment.  They seem to play a niche role in helping firms get governance of master data underway in preparation of and In support of the technology that would come from SAP (SAP NetWeaver MDM).  I was on the panel and heard some great stories of large SAP customers that had worked with Backoffice Associates with SAP ERP.  These were customers with complex businesses, often global, with lots of MDM challenges, and that had used Backoffice in association with SAP applications.  Very informative.

Better yet, I had the pleasure of getting my picture taken with Brent Spiner – otherwise known as ‘Data’.  This was not favoritism – he was on the show floor so lots of folks had their picture taken.  Anyway, you all should know who Data is – and if you don’t, you should J.  I could not wipe the smile from my face all day.

• Key Note: IBM did not make any significant announcements at the event re MDM.  The high level position however was clear however: IBM talked about an “information agenda” and an “application agenda” which emphasizes where IBM’s vision for information on demand is of more value to firms than business applications (think: SAP, Oracle etc).   However, what IBM calls “applications” is very different to what you and I call applications.  IBM implies“transactional” applications only such as finance, accounting, inventory control, even order management.  They do not mean solutions that address the needs of the business for rapid process change, complex/innovative business processes, or competitive processes supported by business applications.
• BM has positioned Cognos as the source of  “business optimization”  which supports the “information agenda”, while the rest of the IBM data management tools help streamline the complexity of integrating all systems in the business
• My observation is that from the information agenda perspective, IBM is headed toward the same place as Oracle and SAP, in that all three vendors talk of the convergence of business intelligence and business applications, but IBM maintains that their view is different due to their focus only on information and its use in supporting “applications” not sought after by others (Oracle, SAP).  IBM talks of “analytical applications” as if this implied embedded analytics in a business process context.  SAP and Oracle are both headed toward the same place but uses different words to describe their starting points.
• MDM was conspicuous by its absence; it was not a focus of any high level message yet there were several examples where master data and the need for “single view” was prominent.  Worse, a case study of NYC.gov, shared with the audience in the key note, referred to “single view of case” which included technology for harmonization and name matching – a form of MDM.  But IBM said that this had not been an MDM issue.  So IBM is confusing “selling tools” with business problems and this could result in confusion in the market.

Bottom line – the event was very well attended and there was lots of interest from users about how to leverage their information architecture to further the benefit to the business.  IBM’s message certainly emphasizes that IBM comes at this conversation from a different perspective than, say, SAP.  But where the two vendors end up is not, and should not be, that different.