IBM MDM Portfolio

IBM has multiple products currently which form the basis of its MDM Platform and Solutions portfolio. The IBM MDM platform it its current form have been a result of IBM’s acquisitions of other companies over course of time. The products which form the basis of this platform are currently are:-

• MDMPIM
• MDM
• Initiate

MDMPIM, which was earlier called TPC, became a part of IBM when IBM acquired Trigo. IBM added another strong contender of MDM Solutions in the form of InforSphere MDM Server earlier called CDI when it acquired DWL. The latest addition to the same platform has been Initiate Systems which has made strong mark in health care and public systems.

Each of these products provides different flavors of master data management solution and caters to different styles of MDM implementation. They also differ in terms of various MDM Server domain supports that they provide. MDMPIM provides very strong Product domain capabilities for managing Product Category, hierarchies, packaging and other product related features. A banking company would prefer a Customer centric MDM solution like InfoSphere MDM Server which has multi-domain support and helps to create links between customer, accounts and products using the same product. It is also a more strategic product because of its multi-domain capabilities to manage party, product, account and also in terms of a very strong data model and business services to support these domains. Initiate Systems on the other hand has a strong hold on Health Care Solutions because of it high data integrity and matching process. Initiate's technology enables users (e.g., analysts, doctors, sales reps) to gain a unified perspective of a customer, patient, or entity across multiple fragmented data sources, in real time.

Thus by having such a strong MDM portfolio, IBM has ensured that it has a strong MDM presence and solutions catering to all the different market verticals and implementation. The acquired products also benefit because of their synergies with other IBM Information Management products related to Business Intelligence, Data Governance, Performance tools, Entity Matching and Industry Models. With all these acquisitions and Integrations in place the future of Master Data Management looks well for IBM.

Comments invited. !!!!

Lately reading a lot on the UID project. It is considered as one of the biggest and the costliest project in the history of the Software with an estimated cost of roughly 6 billion US $. With the project being handled by Nandan Nilkani, there is lot of expectations from that. Currently the ids issued by government like PAN numbers , Election Voting cards, Driving License , Bank Accounts are all for different purpose which have resulted in bribery, loss of income and inefficient services. The goal of UID is to unite all these under a single umbrella. The purpose is there but would it achieve its objective is the biggest question? Or will it become another project like Election Voting Card which could not be implemented completely because of the government irregularity and casual attitude. Whatever votibg cards were provided had a high percentage of erroneous or incomplete data. Hopefully Not.

UID project would create the largest databse of biometric data of around 1 billion people. So which componies have the capability to do that are bidding for the same. Definately the three big Indian IT companies TCS, Infosys and Wipro are hopeful of getting some chunk of work because of their strong Indian presence and the huge workforce. IBM is also a strong contender for this project since it has a strong technical background and expertise in this domain. As already observed multiple companies are bidding for it including the biggies like Yahoo, Google and Cisco as even a small share of the project would be beneficial and profitable because of the shear size of the project.

Sincerely hope this becomes a success and we as Indians take this giant step towards finding and saving our own identity through this Unique identification Number ...:-) All the best to Mr. Nilkani and us!!!..

My first post to my own personal blog. And I would like to add something about myself here. I am a healthy, social, friendly person with a jest of life. One of my favourite past times is music and guess what gardening. Reading is something I would like to do more but somehow most of it now happens on the net only. Gone are the days when you could sit with a thick novel or a book and finish it within a day. But I sincerely hope I get the time to do that soon.

I have recently got into this social networking and blogging way of communication and I am loving it. The first and the formost thing I like here is :-

1. You dont have to worry much about the English that you write . Thank God for that.

2. It is almost like writing a diary but ofcourse with a word of caution. Nevertheless the experince is similar

Hope I can continue to keep my blog active. !!!