Master Data Management

How can you have a single consistent view of the core data all of your enterprise's applications share?

What is Master Data Management?

Master Data Management (MDM) gives you a single consistent view of your enterprise's main data--customers, products, suppliers, etc.--across all of your applications and processes. This would be easy if you only had one application with one database, but becomes complicated in any reasonably complex enterprise because it has lots of apps using multiple data sources storing in multiple formats data that is redundant and conflicting. MDM wrappers this core data with a layer that makes it a lot easier to use.

MDM is an important part of information on demand and information as a service. Many of the Information Integration and InfoSphere products help perform MDM. See the list of Master Data Management products.

Resources

Where you can learn more:

Master data management solution from IBM
"Gartner ranks IBM, Oracle tops in master data management for customer data" (Search Database Management)
"Master Data Management" (IBM Database Magazine)
Master Data Management services – Consulting services
White Paper: IBM Multiform Master Data Management: The evolution of MDM applications (ZDNet)