Hi Refer below links
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/webcontent/uuid/9019fdb1-570c-2a10-b1ab-dd58f...
What is SAP MDM?
SAP has a solid history of being forthcoming about product features and release dates –
unlike most American software firms. Originally focused on “product master data
management”, during 2003-04 SAP began to focus the marketing message for SAP MDM on
“customer data integration”. While SAP was unwavering in its message about enterprise master
data (product, supplier, customer, and employee), unfortunately there was slow user uptake in
applying SAP MDM for master customer data. Instead, early adopters of SAP MDM focused on
product and supplier master data. Through the initial several releases, SAP MDM continued to
show promise and vision – especially in the area of “global data synchronization”.
In July 2004, SAP acquired A2i which was an up and coming software vendor in product
information management (PIM). The public message at that time was that SAP would move
SAP MDM and A2i onto to a common software stack via SAP’s evolving NetWeaver capabilities –
and that we would see a blended/integrated product within 6 months due to the synergies built
into the SAP software stack. The CDI Institute’s view was that this was more likely an 18+ month
migration and during that time it would be prudent not to invest in SAP MDM for customer master
data initiatives until further notice, and that even product master data projects needed to wait for
SAP to deliver some proof points of the proposed newly integrated product. In fact, SAP MD was
never grafted onto A2i.
SAP’s CDI solution is descended from its product master and supplier master data integration
initiatives as joint development with some of its largest customers such as Nestlé and Shell.
Although SAP typically only sells outside of its manufacturing core markets in German-speaking
countries, during 2004 we had begun to see banks and insurance companies in North America
show interest in SAP’s MDM product plans due to tremendous respect for SAP’s vision and
engineering capabilities.
MDM was originally closely tied to SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW) and was
initially marketed via what appeared to many observers as a classical data warehouse solution
(“global spend analysis”). The evolution of the initial SAP MDM product was vital to SAP to free
up numerous internal development teams to better interoperate via shared application data
models and process models. We believe SAP’s attention to thoroughness and rigor will
ultimately pay off in the longer term (and in fact are ahead of application package vendors
such as Oracle with their eBusiness suite which is still migrating to its common Trading
Community Architecture data and process models).
During 2004-05, MDM v3.0 was in ramp-up phase (“alpha/beta”), and therefore we believed that
due to SAP’s acquisition of A2i (xCat), there would be a major slowdown in taking MDM into
production (other than the 15-20 initial beta sites) while SAP grafted MDM’s capabilities onto
A2i’s higher performance technology stack. Again, SAP voted with its €’s to tackle product
information management challenges in enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain
management (SCM), rather than master customer data as have Oracle and Siebel.
What is SAP MDME?
The A2i solutions known as xCat were rebranded as SAP MDME (Master Data Management
Extension) and recently upgraded via the “SAP MDME Feature Pack”, a release integrated
with SAP NetWeaver that included capabilities for rich content management, ability to manage
complex data with support for taxonomies, and hierarchies etc. MDME also included data
models that supported customer, product, employer and supplier – although we are only
aware of one business using even the preceding release of SAP MDM 3.0 for “customer” master
data. Like all contemporary SAP software, MDME employs the standard software distribution via
the SAP Exchange Infrastructure for interactive distribution.
The planned June 2005 release also includes former xCat 5.0 features (multi-lingual support,
syndication, …). MDME’s lean, R/3-iDoc-based model for supplier, customer, material, and
employee was both a strength in high-performance PIM applications but also a weaknesses in
classic CDI applications. In fact, its “ad-hoc consolidation and distribution into one or more
Support for single view of all major objects – customer, product, supplier and employee
(albeit lightweight customer and employee)
• Focused on interactive cleansing and distribution of Material, Supplier, Customer, and
Employee master data within (SAP R/3-based) ERP environment; note that several large
organizations are using it outside of a SAP ERP environment such as GE and
Rubbermaid
• Global metadata synchronization expertise
• Product information management focus
o Fully integrated electronic and print publishing
o High performance parametric search across rich content
• Hierarchical management
• Integration with SAP infrastructure
• 4th generation data hub features (image/content management of A2i)
• English, French and German initial support; Japanese 3Q2005
http://www.sap.com/france/services/education/e-learning/okp/pdf/OMD55S.pdf
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