In 2004, IT researcher Michael Goul observed the first faint signs that a great convergence had begun in the world of data management.

Michael Goul, a professor at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business, has tracked the convergence of active enterprise intelligence, master data management and service-oriented architecture for three years.

Goul, a professor at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business, determined the technologies and ideologies that form master data management (MDM), service-oriented architecture (SOA) and active data warehousing—three of the brightest bodies in the data management universe—were moving inexorably together and would ultimately meet and meld.

For three years, Goul has conferred with industry and academic experts around the globe, confirming his initial convergence hypothesis and meticulously mapping the course of change across industries. He predicts MDM will emerge as the key component in this data management "trifecta."

Goul recently published a paper detailing his findings and spoke with Teradata Magazine about convergence, his research and the changing role of MDM.

Q Did your research identify a particular catalyst that's causing this convergence of MDM, SOA and active data warehousing?

A Businesses have undergone a lot of shocks in terms of the sophistication of the systems that they've been exposed to and what they're purchasing and installing. For example, customer relationship management systems are getting more and more complex, and we've gone from data warehousing to active data warehousing and so on. This evolutionary cycle of systems continues on, and it's been bombarding organizations.

At the same time, business processes have become more complex as well, so once-simple business processes, such as withdrawing money from a bank, now require multiple organizations to interact.

So, we're going to see a correspondence with technology vendors who recognize these trends are happening. They're going to tailor and fine-tune their tool suites to better match what organizations require to be agile in this more convoluted and complex world. That agility demands that systems are able to talk with other systems—sometimes other organizations—and can handle all kinds of collaborative relationships.

Q What makes MDM the key component of data management convergence?

A MDM provides the gravitational pull to bring these technologies into alignment. Like they say, "The stars are starting to line up." SOA can address the where of information because it can get it to where you need it, and active data warehousing can address why the information is important and when it is needed. But MDM addresses both how and for whom, which are the two critical enablers for the alignment.

For example, you have people marching around touting the benefits of service-oriented architecture, saying, "Boy, all you have to do in your company is to install all this service-oriented architecture and you're going to be able to talk with the world and save a whole bunch of money." And other people are walking around saying, "What you really must have is an active data warehouse because it can put things in your business processes so you can make the smartest decisions." Well, both of those things are going to be important, but to enable them to go together, you need the MDM piece because it feeds the SOA the right information with the right semantics that may, for example, come out of the active data warehouse.

Q MDM concepts have been around for a long time, but you seem to be viewing them in a new light. Why is that?

A A lot of people say MDM is an old problem, but the old problem has a new emphasis in a global environment. There are huge corporations currently trying to go global, and while it has always been necessary for companies to maintain consistency when shipping a product to another business unit, when you scale that to a company that's operating throughout the world, it becomes a huge problem.

What I'm saying is there's something more that companies should think about when they jump on this MDM bandwagon, and that's to think about what the future is going to mean in terms of this coming alignment. Companies must have a strategy in light of this happening.

Q How should companies view this coming convergence? Should they be worried? Excited?

A It's exciting! I think the convergence is good because it's like a natural evolution. The right thing will survive.

Q How will companies benefit from this SOA/MDM/active data warehousing convergence?

A Agility. Organizations can engage in collaborative business processes with minimal impedance from their enterprise architectures and systems. This means best-of-breed suppliers, co-designers, et cetera, can be dynamically brought on board—or allied with—using SOA as the technological conduit; active data warehousing can have the data there at the right time to support the collaboration; and MDM can make sure the data has semantic relevance to the parties so business value can be created.

Q Was there an impetus three years ago that led you to connect the dots regarding the coming convergence and started you researching MDM trends?

A Honestly, I was watching the European Union [EU] and coming to understand the advantages of creating a common vocabulary—a federation interlingua—across different groups. The EU has been investing a lot in trying to get Country A to be able to talk to Country B's systems. Some of their early research said, "Maybe some of this common vocabulary stuff is what we need," and they would try to fund those efforts. Some were failing, some were succeeding, but, boy, it just made sense.

My "trifecta" moment about the convergence of MDM, SOA and active data warehousing came while I was working with Intel. Intel coined the phrase "service-oriented enterprise," and they said, "If service-oriented architecture is going to be anything for us, it had better enable us to have inter-organizational collaboration." So that's where they started. And then they moved on to the fact that they need to be a lot more agile with inter-industry semantics, so they back-ended into the discovery that MDM was going to be a key. It was while I was working with them, trying to help them come up with solutions to various issues, that I began to think about convergence and alignment.

Q Is there any advice you could give business executives as they prepare for the coming convergence?

A They must have a strategy, and this is not going to be a one-size-fits-all solution. Technology vendors will come in and say, "What you need today is SOA. Or an active data warehouse. Or MDM." They'll say that each of the three independently will solve all of your problems. I'm saying you'd better understand that they are converging. But you also know your own company's value configuration, so it's not going to be a one-size-fits-all solution. My research tries to provide some guidance in how you might move toward the reality of this convergence in a smart way.

If you think about this convergence coming—this natural alignment of the stars that's taking place—then you can better plan to hit the sweet spot of what you know you need. T

Lori Janies writes about business and technology for various publications.

Photograph by Dan Coogan

Teradata Magazine-September 2007