Master Data Management Adoption Going Strong

Worldwide revenue from master data management software is expected to reach $1.3 billion this year and more than double by 2012, making MDM one of the fastest growing software segments, a market research firm said.

This year's revenue will be more than 24% more than 2007, despite the current economic downturn that has reduced sales in many other technology markets, Gartner said during a recent Chicago MDM summit sponsored by the analyst firm.

Driving adoption of MDM is businesses' continuing need to increase effectiveness, reduce costs and meet compliance requirements, Gartner said. By 2012, the market is expected to reach $2.8 billion.

"The technology continues to mature and has great potential for enabling more-efficient and effective business processes in the future," Chad Eschinger, research director at Gartner, said in a statement.

MDM technology helps organizations achieve and maintain a single view of master data across an enterprise. Master data is the consistent and uniform set of identifiers and extended attributes that describe the core entities of the enterprise. Such data is used across multiple business processes.

As a process, MDM may be workflow-driven or transactional in nature. Business units and IT depatments collaborate, cleanse, publish and protect common information assets that are shared across the enterprise. Gartner, however, cautioned that there is no single technology that meets all MDM user requirements, and products vary by technology, industry, data domain and use case, and many span multiple domains.

The largest MDM markets last year were manufacturing, retail and financial services, which together accounted for 53% of the market, according to Gartner. The researcher expects these industries to continue to dominate through 2012, but says industries that will have greater-than-average growth rates include communications, government, health care and utilities.

By region, North America and Western Europe accounted for almost 86% of MDM software spending in 2007. North America users are expected to spend more than $800 million in MDM software next year, but spending will grow at a slower pace than other regions through 2012. Europe is expected to come close to parity with North America in terms of spending by 2012, but the Asia/Pacific region is predicted to have the highest growth rate, reaching a 9% market share in four years.