There have been many rumors lately that Oracle plans to drop its Customer Data Hub (CDH)product and move over to using its acquired Siebel Universal Customer Master (UCM) instead. If Oracle does make this move, then it is basically admitting that Data Hubs aren't good enough and going with Siebel is a better option.
This will have interesting implications since Oracle has been pushing a single data schema approach, one that encompasses their EBS data model. What will it mean if Oracle drops CDH? It means that they will have to eventually offer the Siebel data model in CDH also. Offering all of these data models pre-packaged will take lots of time because Oracle probably wants to include PeopleSoft and JDE's data models as well. All of these rewrites and integration work admist plans for Fusion is pretty tough. But it makes sense for Oracle to prioritize Siebel UCM integration if it is dropping all other CRM applications in its portfolio in favor of the Siebel CRM solution. The problem is, Oracle gets into this conundrum of continuously re-writing Data Hubs and picking and choosing data models to give to customers.
The reality is that 95% of customers end up re-working and re-shaping their data models anyway and need data objects they hadn't thought of. Customers require the proper tools to create a data model customized for their specific business process. What customers want is data model flexibility, not data model rigidity. I mean, isn't the SOA movement--which Oracle, SAP, IBM, and Microsoft can all agree will happen--all about business process flexibility? Dictating a data model to customers is not the best way to offer flexibility.
What should customers' approach be then? They need a true MDM SOA "service" -- one that allows you to create your own data model. That's truly applying the SOA principle.
2 comments:
It seems that Oracle Customer model is robust as well as the Siebel one. The issue is when you have two products doing the same thing, it obvious to focus on only one who could be the best candidate for the next move. Oracle acquisition of Siebel is very strategic not only from the CRM point of view but also from the analytical perspective (providing Business Intelligence Dashboards for leading industries).
The SOA architecture is still immature and needs some developments rather than having a data model out of the box. If organizations rely only on the SOA architecture, this means that they have to develop all the data models, business events and orchestrating them to be really usable. This could not make sense as most companies already use at least an ERP application. Only in that perspective, SOA will add value specially when integrating different applications without rebuilding the data model.
What an uninformed post. Despite all of the marketing, Oracle TCA is far more robust of a data model than Siebel UCM ever got. Whats more, Fusion, Oracle's next generation application is based on TCA and NOT Siebel UCM.
Maybe the reason why Oracle CDH is being dropped is that the CDH team internally has come under Siebel management.
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