Master Data Management: Pushing Higher Power

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 modeling but 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 (i.e., be able to execute MDM workflows within BPM) by sharing state, process and events. Lastly, enterprises apply different business processes for CDI versus PIM that the fourth generation master data solutions need to heed. To further complicate matters, there will be an ongoing overlap between MDM solution providers and application package vendors. It will be interesting to see how far up (or down) the stack MDM vendors and app vendors will go. 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 even playing a major role in mission critical systems) fully support both PARTY and PRODUCT entity types. In my experience, RFIs/RFPs assume that "MDM" means "multidomain MDM." By 2012, large enterprises will also increasingly mandate that reference data management 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 2011, application package providers will deploy en masse the next generation of MDM-innate (as opposed to MDM-aware) applications; concurrently software as a service (SaaS/cloud) vendors will struggle to provide integrated/native MDM. Also during 2011-12, mega vendors Microsoft and Oracle will essentially give away departmental MDM - via Microsoft Master Data Services and Oracle Data Relationship Management, respectively. By 2012, SaaS providers will have finessed this issue via strategic partnerships and investments in MDM solutions. Moreover, the market for MDM-enabled applications will continue to exceed that for standalone MDM software.