New buzz for Industry..MDM solutions..So what is it?

We have had so many MDM like words before Master File, Master Data, Customer Master file, Product Master File, etc. So whats new with MDM's inception? Is it different from before?

Yes, MDM is a new technique around the maintenance of the old customer/product master file. Electronic data processing(EDP) has evolved from 1950s to 2000s. It was about time to change the maintenance procedure of the master file hence the buzz word "Master Data Management"  . Companies have invested billions of dollars in creation of MDM solutions. Following are the companies that offer MDM solutions as a product -

1. Oracle Siebel UCM/Oracle CDH
2. IBM MDM through InfoSphere.
3. SAP MDM
4. Informatica Siperian (Informatica acquired Siperian in January 2010).
5. SAS DataFlux
6. Initiate Systems
7. D&B Purisma
8. SAP MDM
9. Tibco
10. VisionWare
11. Sun
12. Talend MDM (Open Source MDM)

MDM is a concept to keep all packaged, Enterprise and analytical applications up-to-date with a single view of entities, mainly Customer and Product. Beware, MDM is a concept not a framework. A MDM solution can be built using home grown techniques or through MDM product solution offerings.

So what is MDM anyways?
MDM is a technique to generate a "golden record" of an organization's essential entity such as Customer, Product, Account, etc. Some people argue that a datawarehouse contains a "single version of truth" of these essential entities. Well said, but the truth of the matter is datawarehouses are flattened out from the 3rd normal form. Whereas, a MDM is still in the 3rd normal form that can be leveraged by the transactional system. A transactional record gets updated frequently and cannot show up in the analytical/datawarehouse immediately. MDM data stores get updated immediately through real-time processing, that can help business gain confidence in making a decision. MDM enables data cleansing, matching, de-duplicating and surviving techniques to uniquely identify the "golden record" along data governance procedures with the responsbilities&roles of data stewards.

For the year 2010, Gartner predicts that 70% of  Global 2000 companies would be MDM ready. Forrester projects $6 billion in spending for MDM implementations by 2010.