Master data management is a hot topic in Asia Pacific. That was shown by the keen interest in MDM during Gartner’s BI Summit in Sydney, Australia, in end-February, and in a recent survey that Gartner conducted of the APAC community.
In that survey, master data management was ranked the #1 data-related technology under consideration for deployment in APAC. Forty-two percent of Gartner’s respondents put MDM at the top of their lists, ahead of dashboards/scorecards, predictive analytics, performance management, and 14 other technologies. Given that the survey found only 20 percent of APAC organizations are using MDM today, there’s clearly a lot of room for growth.
I spent two days at the BI Summit, and noticed a marked increase in interest in MDM among attendees compared to Gartner’s 2010 event. A standing-room only crowd of well over 150 (out of 267 attendees at the Summit) packed in to hear a presentation I gave on how MDM can generate the trusted reference data that data warehouses and BI environments need to thrive. (It was nice to see about the half of the audience members raise their hands when I asked how many people were using Informatica today).
As I noted in my talk, with unreliable data in warehouses a major pain point for many organizations, MDM is increasingly being deployed to address the problem. For a quick look at the issue, see a brief Chalk Talk video I recently recorded.
Speaking with both business and IT leaders of large banks, telecommunications providers, and government agencies at the Summit, I heard first-hand how they were suffering from classic problems that MDM is meant to solve. Each was struggling with disparate data in multiple silos that impeded business-critical initiatives to increase efficiency, revenue, and customer satisfaction.
Interestingly, the Informatica customers and prospects I spoke with also inquired about data governance—how to establish a governance program, the policies and processes to put in place, and how business users should be involved. That suggests to me they’re quite far along in envisioning how their MDM deployment should work.
Given the clear customer interest in MDM and the growth curve, global and local systems integrators working in APAC are interested as well, particularly in building practices around the Informatica MDM solution. I spoke with a number of SIs enthusiastic about MDM deployments in the pipeline, further affirming the growth of MDM in APAC.
What have been your observations for MDM in APAC? Share your thoughts.
