Oracle MDM is Hi Definition (HD) MDM

Dears,

MDM is always been my favorite for 2 reasons the first being I know little about but look forward to learn more and second it has real potential to bring in some discipline in the IT infrastructure of a company when every company is in the race to add more technology applications without bothering whether they have right data to provide right information specially the master data. The second reason is the way big league IT brands like Oracle, SAP & Microsoft keep investing in these MDM, specially the Oracle MDM Stack is Hi Defined..

Oracle now has Customer Hub, Supplier Hub, Product Hub, Site Hub and Hyperion Data Relationship Management, which is a financial hub to manage financial entities such as the chart of accounts and other hierarchies, is also an analytical hub. Oracle Customer Hub (formerly known as Siebel Universal Customer Master) is now on release 8.2, which shipped in January 2010, and includes the new Data Governance Manager module. This is the largest customer release in four years.

Oracle’s MDM strategy has two legs – embedded “best in class”. Oracle has OEM’d the Informatica solution, using the Identity Systems Solution (ISS) (now owned by Informatica) and the Address Doctor solution (also from Informatica) for postal cleansing for 200+ countries. The other leg is “open” – Oracle is providing a “Universal DQ Connector” for selected vendors like Trillium, Acxiom, D&B and Datanomic. The embedded “best in class” approach is somewhat controversial, since Informatica is now competing directly with Oracle; since it has acquired the Siperian MDM hub. The end-to-end data quality framework (the Data Quality “Machine”) has a Rules Manager for design, development and validation (IDQ). There is a process (Analyze/Profile, Standardize/Cleanse, Match & De-Duplicate, Enrich) with a Scorecard & Reporting, and an Exception Management Process. The output is to load the MDM system with zero rejects.

Oracle has also acquired Silver Creek Systems, which is focused on product data quality and currently called as Oracle Product Data Quality and forms the part of Oracle Product Hub. It is a self-learning semantic engine to handle the complexities of product information. Oracle Site Hub in particular has experienced strong interest from retailers, fast food companies and large enterprises, which are using it to manage stores and locations.

Oracle’s MDM investments are critical for Oracle in terms of its differentiation strategy, and data governance is the number one item from its customer advisory board. Oracle has reached 1,000 MDM customers across all of its various MDM products.

Oracle’s history is in applications. Oracle brings a pre-built, flexible schema with enterprise-grade, verticalized hub applications. Oracle MDM hubs are pre-integrated with both Oracle and non-Oracle applications. And Oracle provides best-in-class data quality and data governance solutions.

The new kid in the MDM block is Fusion MDM. My first impressions of Fusion MDM is “Oracle could almost start selling this into the MDM hub market immediately!”

Of course, Fusion isn’t scheduled to ship until sometime in 2011, and there’s still plenty of work to be done between now and then. But the core functionality needed for master data management are available. There was plenty to like in Oracle Fusion Applications that didn’t relate specifically to master data management – the new and improved user interface, the embedded analytics, the modern, standards-based architecture, the usability research that Oracle has done, the improved business processes, the built-in collaboration capabilities … the fundamentals of MDM were strong as well. Oracle is bundling into Fusion on an OEM basis: the former Identity Systems matching engine and the former Address Doctor address cleansing tool. Previous Oracle MDM products like Customer Data Hub have had loose integration with Trillium and Firstlogic for address cleansing, but it’s refreshing to see Oracle investing in deep integration with industry leading solutions.

I think there are going to be a lot of Oracle customers who will move to Fusion MDM as the first wave of their overall migration to Fusion, who will see Fusion MDM as a good way to get some early experience with the Fusion applications family, before committing their mission critical Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications to the Fusion platform.

And in 2011 and beyond, I think will be a lot of potential customers who evaluate Fusion MDM positively on its own merits against competitive MDM hubs. Oracle brings a robust data model, open architecture, and a next-generation approach to master data management, with state-of-the-art matching, data quality, middleware, and business process management.

Good Luck Amigos

You’re P&C

DC*