I see large SAP shops also having competitive products and more so a partner has the cruel and cross bearing job to give the best of breed solution - more so when he or she is more comfortable with the SAP Ecospace.
I find the constant updates from other product vendors in the MDM space to be a good point to actually look at SAP MDM from a different hat. While the information of the updates is seeked from different sources, the inferences and observations are with my experience with the products and interactions with key users and experts in that field.
Let us take for example couple of updates which have been published in the new suite of MDM :
A) Kalido - an old horse with a niche fan following has brought in a matching capability within the matching engine. This uses the bitpartite graphs which is also a good feature. How do we compare this with SAP MDM - Personally SAP MDM wins hands down however bitpartite is best run by Netrics matching has DQ - global ID functionality built in. Food for thought for SAP Folks.
Ref:www.cnbc.com/id/30961009
B) Oracle - probably the least threat concieved by the MDM players ; It has decided to sell product data cleansing solution in conjunction with its product data hub with one of its partner in the market. SAP MDM - should not be a problem for has a clear leader board adavantage with oracle on the MDM front.
Ref:www.tcdii.com/oraclemdm.html
C) Last but surely not the least - SAP's biggest threat IBM MDM; Exeros to be aquired by IBM - impact : the IBM WPC is now tougher and stronger having capabilities of profiling during the data doscovery phase during a mdm program. My view from the SAP family and fan club- the BO suite integration in MDM7.0 and further roadmaps would be really the key to break free stringent competition in this space. Siperian and dataflux who are players in this segment would also see this as oppurtunity to share the pie. MDM implementation hence would be further elaborate to make sure data profiling and diligence time required for the same being extended. Consultants , partners need to be aware of more integration techniques and pre-req's required during an implemention.
Ref:www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=g_search&id=976312
While I feel this is early days in the slow economy aquisitions to restate the pie under a new banner - it is surely challenging to see more products in this domain. If you felt implementation was tough - now you have the changes and buy-outs to keep an eye out for.
I would welcome thoughts and more insights on the products my fellow sdn bloggers have come across. I am sure these are quite argueable and hence idea of a blog and have opinions and substantiate the same with demos.
