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Event Report: Informatica Analyst Day Reveals A Growth Strategy

Published on March 18, 2013 by R "Ray" Wang

Informatica Sets The Stage For A New Chapter In Its History

Informatica held its annual industry analyst day February 26th to 27th, 2013 at the Rosewood Sandhill in Menlo Park. The event showcased Informatica’s go-forward strategy and road map for growth over the next three years. Key highlights include:

Capturing a $6.5B market opportunity in license and subscription revenues. Marge Breya, Informatica’s new CMO, set the stage with a vision of how Informatica is poised to capture a $6.5B addressable market. Key use cases include analytics, operational integration, cloud integration, master data management, and data governance. Achieving these results will require $3.6B in installed base plays, $1,9B in new logo plays, and $1B in geographic expansion. Key markets for geographic expansion include replacing hand coding in Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico, and Russia.

Point of View (POV): Constellation estimates a $300B enterprise software market for 2013 with $130B in applications and $170B in infrastructure software. Informatica intends to go after a $6.5B addressable market that includes analytics, cloud data integration, operational data integration, master data management, and messaging. Success will require an expansion in focus from the traditional IT leaders and developer buyers to the emerging needs of business leaders.

Supporting a world of Hybrid IT. Juan Carlos Soto, SVP & GM for Informatica Cloud, discussed how clients now see Hybrid IT as the new norm. In fact, cloud based adoption has shifted from line of business (LOB) owned to IT led adoption of cloud over the past three years. Soto sees three pillars of success that include delivery of a platform for hybrid IT, cloud services for all, and Informatica inside. Key features for 2013 include data masking, process automation, integration with Microsoft Dynamics AX, integration with NetSuite, integration with Workday, integration with Oracle CRM On Demand, integration with Amazon RedShift, and integration with Ultimate Software (which was announced March 13th).

(POV): In a world of Hybrid IT, Constellation expects integration to be a core requirement for success. Consumerization of IT has led to a proliferation of mobile and cloud endpoints that require sophisticated data integration capabilities among all possible connections, data flows, business processes, and access. Informatica’s success depends on its ability to attract the cloud integration decision makers and users for basic cloud integration for enterprise and those seeking more complicated enterprise cloud integration use cases. The platform for a Hybrid IT play via a Virtual Data Machine (VDM) has the most potential for success in creating new business models. Informatica Inside will succeed so long Informatica is seen as “the Switzerland” for integration in cloud stacks and solutions.

Providing the integration and quality requirements for a big data world. Ash Kulkarni, SVP & GM for Data Integration and Data Quality, addressed the analytical integration, operational integration, and data governance strategy. Informatica’s themes for next generation data integration include agility in development, flexibility for deployment, and confidence in management. New features in analytical data integration include built-in data virtualization, complex event processing, support for decision making, and big data integration for Hadoop customers. The data governance features include improved inference for data domain discovery, automated enterprise data discovery, business friendly glossaries with rich metadata lineage, streamlined workflow and task management, data masking, visual exception auditing, audit data retention policies for production and legacy apps archiving,
More…

Event Report: CRM Evolution 2012 #CRME12

Published on August 14, 2012 by R "Ray" Wang

CRM Continues To Evolve In A World Of Engagement

The CRM industry’s major non-vendor customer focused event kicked off at the Marriott Marquis in New York from August 13th to 15th. Conversations with prospects and practitioners at the event highlighted a few emerging trends:

Shift from transaction to engagement. CRM traditionally focused mostly on the management, a bit on the customer, and very little on the relationship. Major shifts in engagement strategy reflect a move towards two way conversations, unstructured information, and influence models.
B2B and B2C are dead. The notion of forced fit silos to represent a customer no longer applies. The world is rapidly move to people to people models and new systems must reflect this.
The rise of customer experiences. Prior to the coining of the CRM term, front office was the term which defined marketing, service, eCommerce, and sales force automation. The move back to integrated customer experiences reflects a renewed interest in all the front office touch points and all the support in the back office required to support the customer experience.
SaaS/Cloud Best of Breed hell is a real issue. Rapid and random deployment of best of breed solutions versus mature suites results in some basic architectural deficiencies. These deficiencies result in inefficiencies that impact the delivery of customer experience as process, data, and meta data integration increase in complexity and cost.

The Bottom Line: Customers must focus on delivering a single source of truth in the fundamentals

Customers making the shift to next generation customer experiences realize that the basic laws of physics must not be violated. Regardless of where key components reside, a single source of truth must be delivered to support next generation customer experiences. This requires a strong blue print and engagement platform that delivers:

Listening and intent
Interaction history
Master data management (customer master)
Business process management
Complex event processing
Security and identity management
Integration

Your POV.

Are you ready for the new shift to front office? What are you doing to deliver an integrated customer experience? Add your comments to the blog or send us a comment at R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org or R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com

Please let us know if you need help with your business strategy efforts. Here’s how we can assist:

Assessing social business/digital marketing readiness
Developing your social business/digital marketing strategy
Designing a data to decisions strategy
Create a new vision of the future of work
Deliver a new customer experience and engagement strategy
Crafting a new matrix commerce strategy

Related Research:

Reprints

Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact Sales .

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy, stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

* Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions. However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

Copyright © 2001 – 2012 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC All rights reserved.
Contact the Sales team to purchase this report on a a la carte basis or join the Constellation Customer Experience!

News Analysis: IBM Acquires MDM Leader Initiate Systems For Public Sector and Healthcare Prowess

Published on February 3, 2010 by R "Ray" Wang

IBM Adds A Leading Customer Data Integration/MDM Pioneer To Its Master Information Management Arsenal

With arguably 10 master information management acquisitions since 2003, IBM continues to push towards its goal of adaptive master data management (MDM) (see Figure 1). The recent acquisition of Initiate Systems comes after the heals of Oracle’s purchase of SilverCreek Systems in January 2010 and Informatica’s purchase of Siperian in January 2010. Rapid consolidation in the MDM market has effectively removed 3 of the 4 leading vendors in MDM. The Initiate Systems acquisition brings IBM key benefits such as:

Strong and proven customer data integration platform. Initiate Systems brings best-in-class data de-duplication, security and privacy, and strong data acquisition capabilities to IBM. A key hallmark of the solution is the rapid real-time matching capabilities and hierarchy management. Among all the MDM vendors, Initiate brings the most number of productive, live customers – about 100 of its estimated 200 customer count.
Point of view (POV): As with rival Oracle, IBM must take steps to harmonize the different MDM solutions in its portfolio. Today, IBM offers Infosphere MDM Server for PIM based on Trigo product information management (PIM) and Infosphere MDM Server 9 based on DWL for customer data integration (CDI). Initiate Systems adds a third and capable product into the line up that’s optimized for customer data.
Deep healthcare and public sector experience. Initiate Systems made its mark in health care and public sector. Today, Initiate serves over 2400 health care sites and over 40 health information exchanges (HIE). Key clients include Alberta Ministry of Health and Wellness, BMI Healthcare (UK), Calgary Health Region, CVS/Caremark, Humana, Ochsner Health System, the State of North Dakota‘s Department of Health and Human Services and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. In the past years, the Chicago, IL based vendor has branched out to other verticals such as financial services, high-tech, manufacturing, and retail. However, its gained the most ground in B2C public sector industries such as health care, law enforcement, governmental agencies, and intelligence.
POV: Expect IBM to augment Initiate’s strengths with IBM’s InfoSphere Identity Insight and InfoSphere Global Name Recognition to address the B2C public sector industries. In health care, IBM Global Services already serves as a key reseller and this will ease the integration of this practice area into Big Blue. Expect Initiate to continue its lead in EMPI and role in public sector projects. Consequently, IBM will have to address how they will work with rival partners such as Raytheon, Informatica, Carefx, Healthvision, Agfa, and dbMotion.
Strong management team. Bill Conroy (CEO) and his capable management team drove an estimated $100M in revenues with a 4 year CAGR of 50% and zero debt. On top of this, they secured a $31M Series E round of funding from EMC, Informatica, Dunruth Capital, BCBS Capital, and Paladin Capital.
POV: With arguably one of the most capable management teams in the industry and one of the sharpest sales minds, Greg Shaw, IBM adds some key assets to its management ranks. How they navigate the Big Blue bureaucracy will be a test of how well IBM conducts integrations of high performing companies. Given the improved collaboration culture within IBM Software Group and the rest of IBM, the future bodes well.

Figure 1. IBM’s MDM Acquisition Road Map

IBM's MDM Acquisition Roadmap

The Bottom Line For Users – IBM Brings Stability To Initiate’s Customers And Adds A Series Of Big Blue Capabilities

Initiate customers gain access to the assets of IBM. Customers can expect IBM to integrate the product line over 2 years but benefit immediately from synergies with other IBM Information Management products such as its knowledge base of industry models, governance, BI & performance management tools, and identity and management tools. As with most IBM acquisitions, key personnel in product development, support, and sales will be incentivized to stay for at least 2 years, providing enough time for knowledge transfer and account transitions. In general, non-IBM customers will gain new resources. Existing IBM customers will find business as usual.

The Bottom Line For Vendors – MDM Moves From Best Of Breed To Foundational Software Stack Component

Given the foundational nature of MDM in any vendor’s software stack, expect more rapid consolidation in the MDM market with very few independents by the end of 2010. Potential acquirers include EMC, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP. Potential targets for EMC, SAP, and HP include Datactics, Kalido, Talend, and Visionware. With Initiate Systems in IBM’s hands, Microsoft’s most likely target would be VisionWare or Kalido as they are the only two vendors optimized on the Microsoft stack. SAP, EMC, and HP may be better off looking at Kalido for its strong pharma, insurance, and data governance capabilities for MDM. MDM will move more and more vertical as domain specific issues become paramount.

Your POV

Are you an IBM or Initiate Systems customer? How do you feel about the acquisition? Would you like to learn how to:

Develop an MDM strategy?
Select an MDM solution?
Negotiate an MDM contract?
Design a data governance program?

Please post or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwaresinsider dot org and we’ll keep your anonymity.

Related Links And Resources

Here’s a list of resources. They will be added on an ongoing basis and updated as appropriate.

Official IBM Press Release

20100203 Spend Matters – Jason Busch “IBM Takes the CDI/EMPI Initiative with its Initiate Acquisition”

20100203 ZD Net: Between the lines – Larry Dignan, Sam Diaz, Andrew Nusca “IBM buys Initiate; Bets on Healthcare IT”

20100203 IDG News Service – Chris Kanaracus “IBM Buying MDM Vendor Initiate Systems”

20100203 SearchCRM.com – Jeff Kelly “IBM to Acquire MDM Vendor Initiate Systems”

Trends: Master Data Management 2010 – Focus On Outcomes Drives Push For Value

Published on October 26, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang

Market pressures and organizational maturity drives new master data management (MDM) trends

Conversations with 31 leading edge organizations seeking business transformation highlight shifts in the MDM trends of the past. Organizations awash in data need to move beyond the clutter and get to the information. More data does not equate to more information. In order to make sense, MDM initiatives now move to align with a new set of focus – business transformation and optimization. Seven key trends now drive the new world of MDM as we enter a new decade.

Master data management must go vertical to succeed in business. Customers no longer want horizontal solutions. MDM must tailor to industry specific requirements. Results must be relevant to how an industry works.
Structured and unstructured content will evolve into the MDM ecosystem. Customers seek tools to tie hierarchies and relationships back to unstructured data in the effort to achieve value in information.
Data in the cloud and SaaS will force hybrid approaches. Cloud based and SaaS models change where and how data becomes augmented. MDM systems must support hybrid models in real-time. Proven data integration must be a given not an afterthought. Data integration must be event driven.
Master data management styles no longer matter, just the results. Issue of styles get relegated to the IT owner. Business users seek results and actionable insights.
Data governance and stewardship more important than ever. Processes must align with use cases. Data hygiene needs to be omnipresent but not cumbersome
Social CRM creates demand for trusted profiles. Organizations now need to understand their advocates and detractors Today’s social and connected world requires more targeted marketing, sales, and service/support programs.
Business optimization and transformation will require MDM to cover more data types. MDM moves beyond customer, product, accounts, and employees. New forms of content such as location, images, video, and tweet streams will enter the equation.

Expect to see more details on each one of these trends in the coming year.

Your POV

Where are you with your MDM strategy? Have you deployed? Are you redeploying? Do these trends resonate with you ? Let us know how we can assist or please post or send on your comments to rwang0 (at) gmail (dot) com or r (at) altimetergroup (dot) com and we’ll keep your anonymity.

Monday’s Musings: Why Every Social CRM Initiative Needs An MDM Backbone

Published on August 31, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang

Proliferation and access to new social tools creates significant challenges for organizations

Organizations engaged in Social CRM initiatives often start out by monitoring the chatter and conversation across a few platforms and channels such as Facebook and Twitter. As these organizations increase their savviness, they quickly realize the enormity of the challenge. The exponential number of touch points and algorithmic channel complexity puts to shame yesterday’s eCommerce strategy and the dated tools designed to address multi-channel. In order to cut through the high noise to signal ratio, organizations must determine how best to manage the complexity and scale of data being generated, amidst a transforming landscape where:

CIO’s no longer determine technology adoption – business leaders and individuals initiate a groundswell.
Consumer technologies provide more innovation, usability, and reliability than what’s available to the enterprise.
Disparate systems results in fragmentation of key information despite new deployment options.

Basic business questions must be addressed in every Social CRM initiative

Despite the massive scale of collected, fragmented data, Social CRM initiatives complement other relationship management initiatives in asking and answering key questions such as:

Do we know the identity of the individual?
Can we tell if there are any apparent and potential relationships?
Are they advocates or detractors? (added 8/31 07:25 am PT)
How do we know whether or not we have a false positive?
What products and services have been purchased in the past?
Have we assessed how much credit risk we can be exposed to
What pricing and entitlements are customers eligible for?

Organizations seek automation technologies to resolve master data issues.

Master data management (MDM) provides a set of technologies that address the acquisition, cleansing, enrichment, and distribution of data. With so many channels and so many sources, Social CRM initiatives require MDM technologies that (See Figure 1):

Resolve matching of a broad range of data types. Organizations will want to associate individuals to products, services, orders, contracts, incidents, location, etc.
Deliver consistent and accurate enrichment of data. Organizations will want to append trusted data sources, hierarchies, and relationship information to cleansed information.
Provide timely synchronization in federated environments. Organizations can expect their data to be federated as social media tools and SaaS deployments push data beyond centralized repositories.

Figure 1. Consistent Information In Social CRM Requires A MDM Backbone

Figure 1. Consistent Information In Social CRM Requires A MDM Backbone Copyright © 2009 R Wang. All rights reserved.

Recommendations – apply continuous customer management (CCM) processes before implementing MDM technologies

Form follows function. MDM technologies should not be implemented without a clear understanding of how customer management and data governance processes will be adopted. Five hallmarks of CCM include (see Figure 2):

Proactive sourcing of data. How can data be kept up to date at every touch point.
Right time delivery of information. What should be delivered when, where, why, and to whom?
Links to action. What can be done to create actionable insight?
Assessment of results. What metrics help paint the overall picture?
Refinement of process. What lessons learned can be applied to future initiatives?

Figure 2. Continuous Customer Management (CCM) delivers 5 unique stages

Your POV

Have you begun your Social CRM strategy without MDM? What MDM issues do you face? If you have put MDM to use in Social CRM, let us know any lessons learned. Post your comment here or reach me direct at r at altimetergroup dot com or r at softwareinsider dot org.

Monday’s Musings: Master Data Management – Do Styles of MDM Matter Anymore?

Published on February 2, 2009 by R "Ray" Wang

Three Architectural Styles Represent Different Technologies To Build MDM

In 2003, customer data hub (CDI), product information management, and master data management (MDM) vendors strived to differentiate themselves by architectural style. Each approach had its advantages and disadvantages. A religion about styles emerged overnight along with a hard core following. Here’s a quick recap (see Figure 1):

Figure 1. The Three Architectural Styles of Master Data Management

Three Common Styles Of Master Data Management

The bottom line – choose a style that aligns with your project’s business driver
While these approaches still exist, leading vendors such as D&B Purisma, IBM, Initiate Systems, Oracle, Oracle-Siebel, SAS DataFlux, and Siperian now have offerings in more than one style. This may make the question seem less relevant, however, its still important to understand the trade-offs while beginning your MDM journey. In fact, it’s best to align the style and approach based on your business driver. Here’s a high level summary:

Cross-referenced registry delivers rapid results for operational efficiency business drivers. This approach is best suited for rapid implementation scenarios such as POC’s that prove the value of master data. Also valuable when data can not be stored on-site.
Pro’s: Rapid implementation without having to agree on a common enterprise data model. Utilize existing source systems.
Con’s: Deduplication of source systems not addressed. Data quality must be solved in each independent source system.
Hybrid harmonized reference enables compliance and regulatory business drivers. This approach allows the best of both worlds, especially when moving to a transactional operational data store is not politically feasible and data governance and stewardship activities are just starting up.
Pro’s: Single master copy of reference data. Uses links to access source system records. Model allows data quality efforts to be applied to shared master reference data.
Con’s: Synchronization with source systems can create some complexity if changes are not made in the hub.
Transactional operational data store supports strategic business drivers. This approach provides a long term path for how legacy applications utilize data.
Pro’s: Single master copy of data. No fussing with latency or synchronization issues. Minimal mapping issues.
Con’s: Requires an agreed upon common enterprise data model to be used by all applications. History must be harmonized and requires extensive key mapping. Assumes homogeneity and requires tons of ETL and dedupe.

Your POV.

Which MDM style are you deploying? What successes have you seen? Post your thoughts or send me a private email to rwang0@gmail.com.

Which one MDM style are you currently using or considering?

Hybrid harmonized reference (44%, 46 Votes)
Cross-referenced registry (35%, 36 Votes)
Transactional operational data store (21%, 22 Votes)

Total Voters: 104

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Vendor Event: Initiate Exchange 2008

Published on September 28, 2008 by R "Ray" Wang

Title: Initiate Exchange 2008
Location: Westin Kierland Resort, Scottsdale, AZ
Link out: Click here
Description: Initiate Exchange (formerly theHub Live) is the user conference dedicated to visionary Initiate customers, prospects and partners. You understand that Initiate technology enables you to elevate your business, providing accurate identification, better customer service, streamlined processes and more. At Initiate Exchange, you will find two full days of education, networking and activities designed to foster your enterprising spirit, develop your vision for the future and help you maximize your investment in Initiate software.
Start Date: 2008-09-29
End Date: 2008-10-01

Speaking Engagement: How to Select the Right Customer Hub / CDI Solution

Published on September 25, 2008 by R "Ray" Wang

[lang_en]Title: Speaking Engagement: How to Select the Right Customer Hub / CDI Solution
Location: Forrester Teleconference
Link out: Click here
Description: How To Select The Right Customer Hub/ CDI Solution

Wednesday, October 08, 2008, 1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m. Eastern time (18:00-19:00 UK time)

Presented By:

R “Ray” Wang

Vice President, Principal Analyst

Forrester Research, Inc.

Cost: $250

Purchase

Who should attend: Business Process & Applications professionals

Description:

Customer hubs provide the information supply chain tools that deliver on the failed promises of customer relationship management (CRM). In this third evaluation of the customer hub/customer data integration market, Forrester used lab-based demos to evaluate 10 leading vendors across 149 criteria. Evaluated vendors provided 20 live customer references. Come hear Forrester assess the state of the customer hubs market and see how the vendors stack up. Learn how to evaluate the vendors and to understand how to conduct your own vendor selection using the Forrester Wave.

Agenda:

* The big picture: continuous customer management

* What clients are asking for

* Sizing up the competition with the Forrester Wave

* Market trends and what it means for vendors and clients

* Recommendations

Vendors mentioned: D&B Purisma, DataFlux, IBM, Initiate Systems, Oracle, SAP, SAS DataFlux, Siperian, Sun Microsystems, and VisionWare.

Related Research:
Start Time: 10:00
Date: 2008-10-08
End Time: 11:00[/lang_en]

Speaking Engagement: Keynote: Moving From Pioneers to Business Innovators. The path to building pervasive MDM in your business

Published on September 24, 2008 by R "Ray" Wang

[lang_en]Title: Speaking Engagement: Keynote: Moving From Pioneers to Business Innovators. The path to building pervasive MDM in your business
Location: Bridgewater Marriott, Bridgewater, NJ
Link out: Click here

Description: We are delighted to announce that the Siperian Masters 2008 International User Conference will be held Oct 21-22 at the Bridgewater Marriott in Bridgewater, New Jersey. The location was selected based on feedback from you to ensure maximum participation and convenience. As with previous years, the conference follows on from the MDM Summit in NYC. Siperian offers participation at the Masters 2008 to our customers at no charge.

This is the 4th annual conference and we continue to grow in content by adding an extra day to conference activities, as well as offering both business and technical tracks.

The theme for this year\’s conference is \”Navigating your MDM Journey\”.

As noted by analysts and the industry press, Siperian customers and partners have some of the most sophisticated MDM deployments anywhere. The MDM Journey theme aims to bring together a variety of topics designed to allow us to share and collaborate on best practices, governance policies, technical architecture, industry specific solutions and more.

Whether you are a seasoned Siperian technical implementer, or a business owner of MDM and governance practices, this conference represents a great opportunity to learn and share your experiences to allow you to continue to be successful on your \”MDM Journey\”.

In order to optimize your value at the conference, I encourage you to pre-register for the conference today so that we may reserve a spot for you, since the number of free registrations may be limited.

We look forward to seeing you at Masters 2008!

Regards,

Ramon Chen

VP Product Marketing
Start Time: 06:20
Date: 2008-10-22
End Time: 7:00[/lang_en]