Gartner, the analyst firm, recently released their magic quadrant for Master Data Management (MDM) of customer data solutions 2014 as reported in the post Customer MDM Magic Wordles.
Now the quadrant for Master Data Management of product data solutions 2014 is out too, so we can overlay the two quadrants and see how multi-domain Master Data Management (MDM) solutions are doing in terms of who are performing well with product master data and who are performing well with customer master data.
If we focus on leading vendors with differences in quadrant positioning, Informatica is better positioned with customer master data (leader) than with product master data (visionary and niche with two different products). Stibo Systems and Riversand are positioned very well within product master data (leaders) but not positioned at all with customer master data, though both vendors are naming themselves as multi-domain MDM solution providers and surely have such capabilities. I personally worked on the multi-domain roadmap with one of them some years ago.
As every year the vendors makes press releases about the quadrant.
Upen Varanasi, CEO of Riversand, has commented in this way: “In this new Digital world, accurate product and other master information is a foundation for our customers’ major business initiatives, which requires a comprehensive, highly scalable and flexible MDM solution with full multi-domain capabilities.” See the full press release from Riversand here.
Mikael Lyngsø, CEO of Stibo Systems says: “Every member of the Stibo Systems’ team remains committed to providing our customers and partners with cutting edge solutions that not only meet their most pressing business issues but also create the most lasting and demonstrable value.” The about the company section has this bold statement: “Stibo Systems is the global leader in multidomain Master Data Management (MDM) solutions.” Read the full press release here.
Rob Karel, vice president, Product Strategy and Product Marketing, MDM, Informatica says: “We continue to deliver a multidomain MDM solution that, in combination with Informatica PIM, delivers end-to-end customer, product and supplier information governance and stewardship. Delivering complete, reliable and consistent product information – across every channel – is the key to a great customer experience.” Informatica also kindly provides a free copy of the report. Get the Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management of Product Data Solutions 2014 here.
Liliendahl on Data Quality 
HI Henrik – in my opionion any vendor that requires more than one product is not multidomain.
The whole goal is not to reuse and build relationships across domains – not to have mutliple domains implementted in different places.
Multidoamin typically implies a different design approach – so vendors that may be leaders in a single domain may make for very poor multidomain approaches.
“… any vendor that requires more than one product is not multidomain.”
I cannot agree more !
Hi Henrik
Thank you for publishing this information.
Sadly, it makes me cringe with when I see ‘market leaders’ like Gartner using the term ‘Customer MDM’! Customer is not a Master Entity it is merely a Role played by Party. This is the type of fundamental error that a high school pupil would be failed on in a test.
And then we have Informatica making equally large blunders with terms like, “customer, product and supplier information governance and stewardship”. Supplier, like Customer is merely a Role played by Party.
Come guys! You are supposed to be the experts. Get your act together and stop making these fundamental blunders. You really have to raise your game.
Sigh…sometimes I wonder why there are so many views of Multidomain principle….is as it states: a single system managing all needed information domains in one system, including RDM, structure Management, Data governance etc…Would love to see Software AG, true Multidomain someday in these picture. I think I still got some work to do to get in there 🙂
Good article btw.
Not quite sure I’m understanding how Gartner provides a multi-domain MQ, given that they insist on a dichotomy of siloed Customer/Product MQs. And by the way, when it comes to customer, last I saw vendor supplier and employee don’t count quantitatively under Customer.
You’re right Charlie, they do not. They provide a MQ for Customer (Party) MDM and an MQ for Product (Things) MDM. As has been said earlier, as well know, true multi domain MDM provides a system for managing all entities in one place. Not two different systems or different products. Gartner know this of course but for reasons it’s hard to understand they separate the two disciplines into two MQs. I wonder if anyone can explain their thinking?
Thanks Gary, John, Sakari and Charlie for commenting. I am still learning the balance between knowing that customer is a party role and then interacting with business stakeholders without being looked upon as nerdish.
You might be surprised at how receptive the business users are to the party model Henrik. I stuck with using Customer rather than Party for a long while to try and not look too conceptual and nerdish. But if you gather the stakeholders around and walk them through a high level presentation of how the data is split into People and Organisations that can take on roles of Customer, Vendor, Competitor, Contact, Resource, etc. they do get it. Especially the analytics groups which are increasingly senior these days.
You can still sell it primarily as 360 Customer View or Single Customer View to get the initial interest but putting it in context of the larger party model and future use cases makes you look like you have a better plan in my opinion. In hindsight I wish I’d done it sooner.
Thanks a lot for commenting Adam. Very encouraging to hear that you have succeeded in a quest that Gartner apparently haven’t been able to complete in their customer .. sorry, engaged parties … community.
Hey,
What a brilliant post I
have come across and believe me I have been searching out for this similar kind of post for past a week and hardly came across this.
Yeah, I kind of wanted to know this as well, since I think the autogen. item number is much longer than the one used in PIM7 which could cause problems for some.
For the versions, remember major.minor.update.hotfix.ebf there are alot of confusion for this. So afaik latest version is 8.0.03.02.xx meaning update 3 HF2.
Thank you very much and will look for more postings from you.
Many Thanks,
Sonu