In late April I was in London to give the MDM keynote at Informatica World, and was surprised to be greeted by a standing-room-only crowd of at least 200 people. When I asked how many of those in attendance were actively engaged in or interested in evaluating MDM, at least a quarter of the room raised a hand. If I’d given the same talk two years ago, I would have expected a crowd of 100 at best, and maybe 10% of the room responding affirmatively to the same question.
Further, in discussions with conference attendees after my talk and in the days following, I got the strong impression that MDM is generating pretty intense interest in the U.K. and the larger EMEA market. While the MDM space in the U.S. has crossed the chasm from early adopters to nearly general use, I feel that Europe isn’t far behind. The interest is to the point where it feels like IT and business executives across quite a few industries are looking at MDM as a means to address a widening range of strategic business challenges. I’d say attitudes in Europe toward MDM are now very similar to where they are in the U.S.: that MDM is widely perceived as a viable technology approach to addressing business problems.
Shortly after my London trip I was in Sydney for the MDM Summit Asia-Pacific Conference. Again, I encountered lots more folks actively evaluating MDM. At the Informatica booth we had a steady stream of IT and business decision makers stopping by, especially from financial services companies and the public sector.
I saw a similar level of interest when I stopped in Singapore to speak with some prospective customers on our way back from Australia. The difference in the South Asia region, however, is that while the need for MDM is very much there, only highly knowledgeable companies are looking to implement MDM at this point. The companies I encountered that were considering MDM for implementation were large firms in the banking, manufacturing, and services industries. One example is a manufacturer in Singapore with beverage bottling divisions around the South and East Asia regions. Each of its facilities uses its own product codes, so they have a lot of inefficiencies in their supply chain and distribution channels.
Also, companies with links to the U.S. or Europe, where the corporate parent has MDM experience, were interested in extending the MDM implementation to the local region. One such example was a pharmaceutical company whose U.S. arm had implemented MDM for regulatory compliance—they’re looking to take that implementation overseas for better reporting capabilities in their Asia operations.
What has been your experience?
