Holistic MDM
Blog: Software AG Blog - Reality Check
Master Data Management should be holistic – not an original idea, but eminently repeatable.
webMethods OneData for master data management is holistic – and has been since 2003. Huh?
I’ll explain.
OneData was originally developed and marketed by Data Foundations (formerly headquartered in beautiful downtown Hackensack, New Jersey). As a former member of the Data Foundations team, I can tell you that those first, OneData chief architects built their MDM solution from the ground-up to be absolutely holistic, if indeed, pragmatically holistic. “Pragmatically”, because Data Foundations was a small, pure-play, MDM provider whose objective was to sell OneData as an enterprise, data management solution to the Fortune 500. Consequently, OneData had to provide its value through coexistence.
And so it did, in no small part due to the solution’s architectural flexibility and non-proprietary design. This non-restrictive approach enabled OneData to integrate, out-of-the-box, with existing external standards in order to manage any kind of sharable, enterprise data. Moreover, OneData could integrate with preexisting, third party, data management tool vendors including data modeling, ESB, BPM, DQ data validation and other solutions. This allowed the first OneData customers to adaptively drive and support data quality business requirements through their MDM implementation. Early on, OneData proved to be technically holistic.
Fast forward past 2010 (when Software AG acquired Data Foundations), and you have a webMethods MDM solution where both depth of functionality and number of use cases continue to expand through potent, bi-annual software releases.
A recent Hub Designs article evaluating the substance of Software AG’s 11th and 12th release (OneData webMethods 9.8/9.9), noted MDM’s positioning in Software AG’ Digital Business Platform:
“webMethods OneData comprises a component of the Software AG ‘Digital Business Platform’. The Software AG approach shows an understanding that solving business problems and meeting business needs almost always involves multiple data and process systems that run across an organization, and beyond”.
Later, in discussing webMethods OneData’s support for multi-domain and multiple implementation styles (or multi-vector), Hub Designs notes:
“Multivector is like multidomain on steroids: ready to handle multiple domains and architectures, as well as the ability to work across multiple industries, business cases, and organizational structures. Multivector MDM also gives rise to advanced comprehensive capabilities for data governance, data modeling, data integration and so on, along with business process / workflow, security, scalability and other functional must-haves”.
This support for holistic MDM has focused attention on webMethods OneData as a leading process driven platform – enabling companies to tie together IT data management objectives and business, process improvement initiatives.
To summarize, webMethods OneData provides:
- Multi-domain, supporting multiple data sets and subject areas
- Utilization of enterprise data models, without vendor lock-in
- Non-restrictive, non-proprietary architecture
- Interrelation of data management use cases, including reference data, hierarchies and metadata
- Flexible integration with all systems housing shareable, enterprise data
Ultimately however – and underscored by an open and flexible architecture – webMethods OneData’s broad-based functionality infuses a framework for a complete approach to enterprise data management. OneData is not only multi-domain in the traditional sense, but holistically multi-domain. Customer, product and location data is easily and hierarchically interrelated as needed, and responsive to real-world business requirements.
This makes MDM what you would hope it to be. A spell-checker for all sharable data, and an on-going partner ensuring the kind of good and consistent data demanded for successful business process-improvement.
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