This week The Galloping Data Architect and I are attending the Gartner MDM conference in Hollywood, Florida. As the week has gone on I've been making a note of quotes that I hear or conclusions that I draw myself whilst listening to the various speakers that feel pertinent to me based on my own MDM experiences over the past two years. I thought it would be useful to list some of those here in what I will colloquially call my "MDM axioms". If the quote is not attributed to anyone then its a conclusion that I drew myself while listening to others.
- "No amount of SOA is going to be useful without MDM." - Andrew White, Gartner Research VP
- "Traditional approaches to BI do not solve the master data problem for operational systems."
- "[MDM] is not just about technology. Your MDM initiatives will fail without MDM governance." - John Radcliffe, Gartner Research VP
- "MDM can facilitate a convergence of business intelligence and operational applications."
- "Modeling lists of entities and their attributes in an MDM system is not much use if we do not model the relationships between them."
- "CIOs are worried that by creating true transactional MDM systems then they are also creating a single point of failure." - Justin Lafayette, IBM
- "In a phased approach to MDM, if you do phase 1 successfully then other people within the organisation will start knocking on your door." - David Corrigan, IBM
- "Data quality is a pre-requisite for MDM success." - Ted Friedman, Gartner VP Distinguished Analyst
- "MDM systems can be an infrastructure on which to build operational systems such as BI, CRM & ERP applications. In turn, Data Quality initiatives are an infrastructure on which to build MDM systems."
- "Data Quality is not a technology issue and Data Quality is never solved forever." - Ted Friedman, Gartner VP Distinguished Analyst
- "The IT department does not feel the pain of Data Quality issues, the business does. Hence, the business needs to be engaged in addressing those issues."
- "A data warehouse is the wrong place at which to start solving data quality."
- "A service oriented architecture (SOA) will not solve Data Quality issues. On the contrary, addressing Data Quality issues will enable successful SOA implementations."
- "Position Data Quality as a business issue and a major consideration for MDM, not as a technology solution." - Ted Friedman, Gartner VP Distinguished Analyst
According to a dictionary I just looked at an axiom is "a self-evident truth that requires no proof". Well, maybe then I've been a little impertinent in calling these things above axioms so over the coming weeks and months I shall endeavour to better explain what some of these mean and why I think they are worth remembering. Watch this space.
-Jamie