The success of a product is ultimately proved out by customer adoption. For some reason, MDM is an area where poor market perception has severly limited its progress. Shifting strategies by Oracle, IBM, and SAP have stunted this emerging market. It's caused concern over whether MDM is a viable opportunity, whether any vendors have a complete solution, and whether customers really want it. Well, I can tell you, customers definitely want it. Webinars on the MDM topic is consistently sold out. The pipleline for MDM is jam-packed, across several industries. Yet, it is that bias against MDM as the red-haired stepchild after several initial stumblings in product direction (mistakes committed by SAP and Oracle alike) that continues to stunt MDM growth.
Like I said, ultimately it depends on the customers. Today, SAP has more than forty customers live and more than thirty references. If that doesn't say "good product" with a solid future, I don't know what does. Only IBM may have more customers through acquisitions and service engagements.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
A Note on the "Bloatosphere"
Tom Smith from InformationWeek makes a great point about the proliferation and longevity of blogs:
The number of blogs has increased 100-fold since 2003 to 50 million. In addition, the total has doubled every six months for about two years, according to a new report quantifying the blogosphere by Technorati. In July alone, there were 1.6 million blog postings daily, or 18.6 per second. Two blogs were created each second of each day.
While the report and its author say the rate of blogging activity and growth can't continue, the data begs many questions about the direction of blogging: Are quality blogs simply getting lost in the noise? Or more precisely, is quality even relevant in the blogging world? How do you find blogs worthy of consistent return visits when the universe of blogs has reached into the tens of millions? If you do have a quality blog, is it even possible to build a sustainable audience and consistently deliver valuable (or entertaining or insightful) information to readers?
I do think that we're getting to a point where there IS a lot of noise. But if you are an informed reader, you can easily make the distinction between a quality blog and someone who is just spewing. Starting a blog is easy but maintaining it and finding a voice in a sea of very opinionated industry insiders is challenging. I do agree that over time, they will consolidate, like any other market. However, I am constantly amazed at the breadth and depth of blogs and continue to discover blogs of note in every walk of life -- from ones dedicated to niche software markets to ones on fashionable purses. I mean, the key is community, right? As long as you can build and sustain a community interested in a certain topic, consistently providing updated and interesting information, then you are hardpressed to find another one just like it.
The number of blogs has increased 100-fold since 2003 to 50 million. In addition, the total has doubled every six months for about two years, according to a new report quantifying the blogosphere by Technorati. In July alone, there were 1.6 million blog postings daily, or 18.6 per second. Two blogs were created each second of each day.
While the report and its author say the rate of blogging activity and growth can't continue, the data begs many questions about the direction of blogging: Are quality blogs simply getting lost in the noise? Or more precisely, is quality even relevant in the blogging world? How do you find blogs worthy of consistent return visits when the universe of blogs has reached into the tens of millions? If you do have a quality blog, is it even possible to build a sustainable audience and consistently deliver valuable (or entertaining or insightful) information to readers?
I do think that we're getting to a point where there IS a lot of noise. But if you are an informed reader, you can easily make the distinction between a quality blog and someone who is just spewing. Starting a blog is easy but maintaining it and finding a voice in a sea of very opinionated industry insiders is challenging. I do agree that over time, they will consolidate, like any other market. However, I am constantly amazed at the breadth and depth of blogs and continue to discover blogs of note in every walk of life -- from ones dedicated to niche software markets to ones on fashionable purses. I mean, the key is community, right? As long as you can build and sustain a community interested in a certain topic, consistently providing updated and interesting information, then you are hardpressed to find another one just like it.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
The Difference Between SAP MDM and Oracle Data Hubs
SAP’s MDM approach is to primarily synchronize and harmonize data, letting BPP or SAP solution modules retain their individual master data persistence. This is different from Oracle’s DH approach, which dictates DHs as the only master data storage. It does not allow EBS modules to retain master data persistence. In this way, Oracle had ambitions to control all master data in an organization, regardless of what systems they had, SAP or otherwise. This centralized hub and spoke model however, is highly inflexible and has its weaknesses. Oracle realized this and recently changed its product plans to shift all DH technology to the Siebel platform. This move improves upon Oracle’s DH offering because Siebel lends a federated or distributed master data management approach, where any installation can be a master and any installation can be a slave. This approach is more similar to SAP’s as it allows flexibility in adapting data management to whatever business process flow the customer wants.
If the customer wants its CRM system to be the single source of creation for customer master and the one that retains all customer records, then that is easily enabled. The rules for data mapping, data distribution, and data validation for source and destination systems are easily defined as processes for managing data. The customer would not have to continually ping the hub for master data any time updates or changes need to be made. While these are Oracle’s future DH plans, currently the DH product is still based on old Oracle technology. Oracle will likely maintain the old DH product as it develops the new Siebel-based product.
If the customer wants its CRM system to be the single source of creation for customer master and the one that retains all customer records, then that is easily enabled. The rules for data mapping, data distribution, and data validation for source and destination systems are easily defined as processes for managing data. The customer would not have to continually ping the hub for master data any time updates or changes need to be made. While these are Oracle’s future DH plans, currently the DH product is still based on old Oracle technology. Oracle will likely maintain the old DH product as it develops the new Siebel-based product.
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