After the first CDI/MDM conferences (arranged by Aaron Zornes, founder of the CDI Institute) we can see further interest in the subject at the CDI Americas Summit in Boston held this week.  The conference attracted good case studies such as Intuit, and featured a keynote from Jill Dyche.  Jill is one of the founders of Baseline consulting and has a lot of real world experience in CDI projects.  She has just published a useful book about CDI, which has plentiful case studies and useful discussions about how CDI fits in with other things like EAI.  It is well worth reading.

I am firmly of the belief that CDI is a subset of MDM, and that companies embarking on a CDI project need to do so with an eye on the broader context of an MDM initiative.  If not then there is a danger of silos of technology, one for “customer”, then another for “product”, and then yet more for all the other (many hundreds of) types of master data that actually exist. 

Even the CDI Institute called its last conference the “CDI MDM” conference, and I would expect to see further blurring of this (in my view artificial) distinction as more companies begin to take a good look at their master data issues.  It would be useful for analysts to help give some structure to the MDM market, since at present there are a wide range of tools being touted as MDM, yet varying widely in scope and capabilities, some of them complementary to one another.  Many customers considering MDM are undoubtedly confused at present by the overlapping slideware that vendors are producing, and the lack of clarity will slow adoption as customers feel they need to take a step back in order to avoid dead-ends.  There are some individual analysts who understand MDM well e.g. Dave Waddington at Ventana, Andrew White at Gartner and Henry Morris at IDC, but the overall market is still nascent and confusing for customers.  The MDM v CDI v PIM discussion simply adds to the smoke, and the quicker an overarching framework gains acceptance the quicker customers will venture into real projects rather than studies and evaluations.  There is an analogy here with consumer electronics: competing formats that muddy the waters in the eyes of customers cause uncertainty and reduce consumer confidence, causing customers to hold back from purchases.  I feel that something similar is happening in MDM, and the faster the industry can get its terminology straight the faster the market will develop.

After the first CDI/MDM conferences (arranged by Aaron Zornes, founder of the CDI Institute) we can see further interest in the subject at the CDI Americas Summit in Boston held this week.  The conference attracted good case studies such as Intuit, and featured a keynote from Jill Dyche.  Jill is one of the founders of Baseline consulting and has a lot of real world experience in CDI projects.  She has just published a useful book about CDI, which has plentiful case studies and useful discussions about how CDI fits in with other things like EAI.  It is well worth reading.

I am firmly of the belief that CDI is a subset of MDM, and that companies embarking on a CDI project need to do so with an eye on the broader context of an MDM initiative.  If not then there is a danger of silos of technology, one for “customer”, then another for “product”, and then yet more for all the other (many hundreds of) types of master data that actually exist. 

Even the CDI Institute called its last conference the “CDI MDM” conference, and I would expect to see further blurring of this (in my view artificial) distinction as more companies begin to take a good look at their master data issues.  It would be useful for analysts to help give some structure to the MDM market, since at present there are a wide range of tools being touted as MDM, yet varying widely in scope and capabilities, some of them complementary to one another.  Many customers considering MDM are undoubtedly confused at present by the overlapping slideware that vendors are producing, and the lack of clarity will slow adoption as customers feel they need to take a step back in order to avoid dead-ends.  There are some individual analysts who understand MDM well e.g. Dave Waddington at Ventana, Andrew White at Gartner and Henry Morris at IDC, but the overall market is still nascent and confusing for customers.  The MDM v CDI v PIM discussion simply adds to the smoke, and the quicker an overarching framework gains acceptance the quicker customers will venture into real projects rather than studies and evaluations.  There is an analogy here with consumer electronics: competing formats that muddy the waters in the eyes of customers cause uncertainty and reduce consumer confidence, causing customers to hold back from purchases.  I feel that something similar is happening in MDM, and the faster the industry can get its terminology straight the faster the market will develop.