what is current indian market on mdm ?

[Former Member]

hi experts

i am new to mdm i planing to learn mdm. can any body suggest me what is the current mdm market in india.

can i get job if i place 2 years xi and 6 months on mdm ??

or now in indian companies what they are looking on mdm(skills ) people.

thanks in advance

Edited by: g.praveen kumar on Jun 6, 2008 6:47 PM

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi ,

SAP has spent the last three years building out its SAP NetWeaver MDM solution to meet the

needs of its business application user community, particularly in product-centric industries. As the

SAP NetWeaver MDM 7.1 product nears ramp-up during the fourth quarter of 2008, SAP is

developing its next three-year road map for likely announcement during that same quarter.

Content is likely to include how to span MDM across the world of business intelligence for broad

integrated analytical MDM, support more out-of-the-box integration within the SAP environment

for rapid process reorchestration (service-oriented architecture), and more-effective management

of non-SAP-centric master data. SAP is challenged to meet the current needs or high-volume

business-to-consumer (B2C) situations common in service and government industries, and

distributed authoring for multiple data domains in many industries.

SAP NetWeaver MDM 7.1, the next release, is due in the fourth quarter of 2008 for ramp-up only.

It will be released as part of a unified SAP NetWeaver release where all components will be

released at version 7.1. This release of SAP NetWeaver MDM will focus on an initial integration of

Business Objectu2019s data quality, data integration and data profiler capabilities, expanded data

modeling capability designed to overcome the current single repository per domain restriction that

limits the ability to build relationships between, say, product and supplier, along with batch data

load and publication performance improvements.

Users of SAP Business Intelligence (BI) could ensure the semantic consistency of their master

data within SAP NetWeaver BI via packaged integration to MDM and through application

programming interfaces. The promise of this master data integration between SAP applications

and SAP BI is to simplify and reduce the cost of integrating and governing master data across

operational and analytical environments. This integration was shipped by SAP in 2007, although

Gartner has not completed a reference for this integration. With SAP NetWeaver 7.1, SAP will

extend this integration to the Business Objects' environment.

As part of a previous service pack release, SAP released a new user interface that employs SAP

NetWeaver Portal, and accesses SAP NetWeaver MDM services. This user interface is needed

by most nonpower users. The power users that still manage the complex data modeling routines

will need access to the client/server application, which is the native SAP NetWeaver MDM Data

Manager. This two-tier architecture will continue for the near future.

A customer implementing the SAP MDM "solution" will implement SAP Portal and SAP

NetWeaver MDM Data Manager in a two-tier implementation. The two-tiered architecture has

portal access for most users and a legacy MDM fat client for power users

The Business Objects' data quality and data profiling services, packaged as "MDM Data

Services" after the acquisition of Business Objects by SAP, will be integrated into the SAP

NetWeaver MDM, thus adding some of the needed services for any MDM program. The

combined solution will be sold by Business Objects resources into its customer base, just as the

combined solution will be sold by SAP into its customer base. Business Objects and SAP will

jointly bring to market, over several years, an increasing integration between the two stacks in

support of MDM, although the initial parts of that integration won't be formally available until 2009.

Today, customers source their data quality, data matching, data cleansing, data integration and

MDM solutions, often from different vendors u2014 they are most often not preintegrated. Some

minor overlap exists between how SAP NetWeaver MDM handles data cleansing and data

quality, but the Business Objects' technology equates to a best-of-breed offering in this area, so

the sooner the two are integrated, the better it will be for SAP customers looking for an integrated

solution for MDM.

SAP has several other requirements already identified, which form part of the first phase of the

next three-year road map. One major theme will focus on a unified semantically consistent data

model across SAP ERP 6.0, SAP CRM and SAP SOA By Design application stacks. SAP ERP

6.0 represents the "stable core" of ERP services (excluding SAP CRM, SCM, PLM and supplier

relationship management) that forms the foundation of SAP's go-forward ERP strategy for larger

enterprises; SAP SOA By Design represents a set of new services sharing technology used to

develop SAP Business By Design targeted at the small or midsize business market. A side-byside

implementation of services from ERP 6.0 and SOA By Design is what SAP is targeting in

2009 to enable its customers to develop new and innovative business applications. If the data

model that is the foundation for SOA By Design is the same as for SAP Business By Design, then

this integration is not as easily achieved since the underlying data models in ERP 6.0 and SOA

By Design would be different. SAP NetWeaver MDM cannot readily ensure semantic consistency

of any master data or master data definitions across the two stacks until new functionality is

brought to market. Also, as of yet there is no road map to explain how the data model within SAP

CRM will be reconciled with ERP 6.0 and SOA By Design. With a functional enhancement

release (ramp-up) targeted at the middle of 2009, SAP will provide out-of-the-box, standardized

integration maps for ERP 6.0 and SOA By Design (excluding SAP CRM) for MDM, thus reducing

the integration costs and latency when composing services from the different stacks.

Another area that has been weak for SAP is governance. SAP is working to address this by

establishing an explicit, workflow-oriented solution that will extend from the design of an

enterprisewide master data metadata model to access and process rules used to govern how the

master data flows, is stored and is used by the applications in the business. Gartner understands

that SAP is in pilot mode with some strategic customers, and the solutions being described look

promising u2014 even to the point of taking SAP in a much needed direction that would make SAP

NetWeaver MDM more useful to many more SAP and non-SAP application users. The

technology stack for this offering has not been finalized, and there is nothing other than tentative

plans to release a first version, sometime in 2009, in ramp-up. So this new offering may not be

widely available until 2010.

Bottom Line:

SAP has spent the last couple of years building out the core SAP NetWeaver MDM technology

and defending its own business application installed base from best-of-breed encroachment. SAP

has been reasonably successful, though complex and larger customers report using several

MDM technologies for the near future.

SAP has been investing in its technology to deepen functionality in core domains such as product

master data, as well as improving support for customer master data. SAP customers report

progress on many fronts, although no overall best-of-breed support across all domains.

SAP is listening to customers and taking advice in areas where it is weakest, and developing new

solutions or better integration in the areas of master data governance, alignment of master data

across operational and analytical environments, and data quality/profiling of data as part of an

MDM program.

SAP continues to implement many MDM for product data programs, and fewer MDM for customer

data programs. SAP remains challenged in the area of highest-volume B2C situations common in

service and government industries with distributed authoring.

SAP sees the opportunity to leverage data quality, data integration, dashboarding and reporting

functionality from Business Objects.

SAP MDM is a far more credible MDM product than it was when the current three-year road map

started in 2005, but it still has many challenges to overcome in meeting SAPu2019s aspiration and

marketing claims that it can meet all its customer needs for MDM in a single integrated product.

Regards

Nidhideep Bhandari