A Software Insider's Point of View

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 [...]

Informatica Enters The Battle For Master Data Management Dominance

As with any best of breed market, only a few will survive and even fewer will succeed.  Despite a leading offering, Siperian’s faced a rocky financial situation over the past 12 months.  Many suitors pursued Siperian but in the end Informatica’s $130M acquisition of Siperian took one [...]

Keep In Mind Basic Rules Still Apply Regardless Of Deployment Option

The proliferation of SaaS solutions provides organizations with a myriad of sorely needed point and disruptive solutions.  Good news - business users can rapidly procure and deploy, while innovating with minimal budget and IT team constraints.  Bad news - users must depend more on their [...]

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 [...]

Complete Customer Addresses Today’s Market Conditions
On October 5th, D&B Purisma Solutions group announced its first hosted business data management app.  When generally available in November 2009, Complete Customer will deliver a customer database that will be self managed by organizations departments.  Organizations and their departments will take ownership of their data in a hosted offering.  [...]

This post was collaboratively written on a wiki with my colleague Jeremiah Owyang whose focus is on customer strategy which encompasses social technologies. Together, we’re covering convergence of the emerging and incumbent technology system.  This entry is also cross-posted on his blog.

Jive Offers Brand Monitoring Using Radian 6 -Empowering Companies To Quickly Respond
Jive Software made [...]

This post was co-written with Jeremiah Owyang, Partner and Colleague at Altimeter Group

Above: Pictures from Salesforce’s event
Salesforce.com launches a new set of social apps that make CRM connected to the social web. So what does it mean?
Salesforce.com’s Twitter integration and application launch helps brands monitor what’s being said. Yet despite the fanfare, the application lacks [...]

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 [...]

(Photo: Siperian Masters’08 registration area.  Copyright © 2008 R Wang. All rights reserved.)
About 200 attendees were present as Ramon Chen, VP of Marketing, kicked off the event to the theme of adventurers and pioneers in MDM at the Bridgewater Marriott (New Jersey).   CEO, Peter Caswell, led the keynote session with a view on where [...]

“Begin with the end in mind is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There’s a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation to all things.
~ The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey”

This Coveyism rings quite true especially with MDM deployments.  Those seeking to innovate [...]

Quick thoughts from Scottsdale.  Initiate as many you know is one of the leaders in the customer hubs/MDM market.  At their annual conference, Initiate Exchange, a few key trends emerged from conversations with customers and partners:

Rapid deployment still key to securing buy-in a the business level. The registry style approach lends itself to demonstrating quick [...]