Microsoft’s Master Data Bulldog Set to Spice Up 08
Microsoft’s Master Data Bulldog Set to Spice Up 08
January 11, 2008: Microsoft’s upcoming master data management product, codenamed ‘Bulldog’ has been the focus of intense speculation over the last few months, but 2008 could be the breakout year where MDM really shines.
Master Data Management (MDM) is on several radars as being a technology to watch, Microsoft certainly agree with their acquisition of Stratature in June 2007, which formed the basis for the Redmond based company to work on an MDM product for Microsoft Office.
What is Master Data
Master data is core business information in both traditional forms such as customer, employee and policy information as well as unstructured information such as documents and images. The management of this data or MDM focuses on shared master data that’s common across different sets of information from various parts of the business.
“Most software systems have lists of data that are shared and used by several of the applications that make up the system. For example, a typical ERP system as a minimum will have a Customer Master, an Item Master, and an Account Master. This master data is often one of the key assets of a company. It's not unusual for a company to be acquired primarily for access to its Customer Master data.” Said Roger Wolter and Kirk Haselden in their report on
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Microsoft are hailing it as a world first, though it’s more aptly labeled an interesting first as the software giant uses new interactive data tags on their financial statements.
Microsoft Office Up For Sale
Despite the misleading headline, Microsoft’s old office is actually up for sale, only it’s the original premises where the company was founded and not its popular application suite.
Does Bulldog Bite?
Microsoft’s MDM effort is being produced by a company-wide initiative across their “SQL Server, Business Intelligence and SharePoint groups to deliver on a unified Master Data Management (MDM) solution to improve the information management initiatives.” A Microsoft spokersperson said in a statement.
Bulldog, when it’s finally released, is aimed at delivering authorative data to businesses that can be tailored to the unique way each different organisation runs their business. While it’s going to be tough to deliver on this kind of promise, the MDM space isn’t one which has seen much action, just a lot of hype and may be a pioneering area of opportunity for the Californian based company. While it’s true that Stratature had its own network of clients, the company had only 16 employees at the time of its acquisition, so even they had a limited impact on the industry.
This isn’t to say MDM isn’t a market that exists yet, but it’s definitely in its infant stages and yet to have the runaway success that it could have given that it will be pushed out by one of the internet’s biggest software giants, and as part of their existing Office suite.
APAC Gets to Play
While Microsoft doesn’t disclose product revenue information by geography, they were able to tell us that their has been significant in the Asia Pacific region in their MDM development since the acquisition of Stratature.
“Since the Technology Preview was announced in November 2007 we have seen interest in it globally including many customers in the Asia Pacific region. This is not surprising to us since Stratature had customers in the UK, Europe, Australia, South Africa and North America.” Said a Microsoft spokesperson.
The November preview of Microsoft’s MDM solution was to a select group of customers and partners for testing, which has restored confidence that the software is still on track for it’s eventual release. Whether or not we see it come out this year is up in the air, but it’s certainly generating a lot of industry interest and expectation for a product that wasn’t all that talked about little over a year ago.