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.
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