IBM MDM Suite

MDM product from IBM is known as InfoSphere Server. For web they have WebSphere and for Data (Information) obviously InfoSphere :).
According to IBM site this product provides MDM services for various type of domains :- "customer, account, product, as well as other data types like location".

They have a product called "IBM InfoSphere Master Data Management Server for Product Information Management". So this is actually PIM but they call it "a core element of a customer’s master data management strategy".

According to IBM website InfoSphere Master Data Management Server: "contains more than 800 business services out-of-the-box to manage both complex and simple master data inquiries and updates."

One thing which looks interesting is IBM's strategy of going multi domain in MDM: all types of master data, whether it is Product or Customer data.

Oracle Master Data Management Suite

MDM is essential for success of SOA. It requires tools to achieve its goal of single, standard, common view of master data. Almost all the vendors are offering MDM tools and software. Let us see what Oracle is offering in this space

Oracle Customer Hub
Customer data integration (CDI) solution. It provides following:
A prebuilt extensible global master data model for customer information
Services to maintain customer data across various systems and processes
Capabilities to acquire, synchronize, and federate data
Change and audit controls for data governance

Oracle Product Hub
To centralize all product information from heterogeneous systems. It provides:-
Import workbench for improved data quality
External transaction views.
Mass maintenance capabilities to manage updates to multiple products
Product sales configurations for manufacturing and service industries
Change control capabilities
Rich user interfaces for unstructured content management
Predefined operational attributes with unlimited extensibility

Oracle Site Hub
It is a location mastering solution. It provides:-
A prebuilt extensible data model (site master).
Unlimited number of predefined and user-defined attributes for consolidating site-specific information
Manages updates to multiple sites
Site mapping and view using Google Maps®
Prebuilt integration with Oracle Inventory, Oracle Property Manager, and Oracle Enterprise Asset Management.
Web services to share data and integration with various systems.

Hiperion data relationship management
Previously known as Hyperion Master Data Management. To build consistency within master data assets. According to Oracle website "it provides the industry's first data model-agnostic master data management solution built to enable financial and analytical master data management in dynamic, fast-changing business environments".

For more information please visit Oracle Website:- http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/master-data-management/index.htm

SAP Master Data Management

Master Data Management (MDM) product from SAP is known as "NetWeaver Master Data Management". NetWeaver MDM is part of (one of the component of) SAP's NetWeaver product suite.

SAP NetWeaver is foundation for all SAP applications. It is SAP's SOA platform suite. NetWeaver is built upon open standards and inter-operate with, technologies such as Microsoft .NET, Sun Java EE, and IBM WebSphere. It can be extended by Microsoft .NET of Sun Java EE.

Standard architecture for SAP MDM can have a centralized MDM server and clients connected it. Clients are connected to MDM server through SAP's Exchange Infrastructure using XML documents. Clients can also connect without Exchange Infrastructure.

Implementation scenarios

• Centralized cleansing, removal of duplicates and consolidation, key mapping and reporting in SAP BI. In this scenario data is not supposed to be sent to originating systems.
• Above mentioned activities along with redistribution of processed data to originating systems.
• Maintaining master data at a central MDM system.

SAP purchased A2i in year 2004. A2i was in to Product Information Management. It is believed A2i is capability and resource became foundation for SAP's MDM till version 5.5 and that is why some people didn't consider it as a full MDM but a PIM. Newer versions 7.x are better equipped to provide full MDM capabilities. Although adoption of SAP MDM was some what slow but we will have to see whether it will make any difference in its new version or before that SOA story itself will change its direction.

Book - SAP NetWeaver for dummies By Jeffrey Word preview with limited chapters is available on google books.

Sun MDM suite

(Note: This post was written long time back before Oracle acquired Sun so now we will have to look in to future strategy of Oracle on MDM)
The Sun MDM Suite is based on the Sun Java Composite Application Platform Suite (Java CAPS). Sun MDM is developed in open source. It includes an infrastructure layer, Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) layer, MDM layer, and portal layer.

The MDM layer includes the core MDM products. Following is description of these products:-

Sun Master Index
Defining reference data structure, storage and maintanance of this reference data.

Sun Data Integrator
For extracting legacy data from existing systems, transforming it and loading it into a master index database.

Sun Data Mashup Engine
Data aggregation from multiple sources to provide a single view of enterprise data.

The Sun Data Quality and Load Tools
Profile, cleanse, standardize, match, and load the reference data. It uses "Sun Data Integrator" for loading. Following are the tools related to data quality & loading:- Master Index Standardization Engine, Master Index Match Engine, Data Profiler, Data Cleanser, Initial Bulk Match and Load Tool

I have summarized Sun MDM suite for the benefit of readers here but I have not described them in more detail because a very good documentation is availabe at Sun's site. For more information please refer:-
http://developers.sun.com/docs/javacaps/products/sun-mdm-suite.jsp