Master Data Management (MDM) vs. Intelligent Data Management (IDM) with Microsoft Dynamics AX

Increasing revenue, decreasing costs and the successful management of governance, risk and compliance is the name of the game in today's economy.   

In order to make necessary business decisions, executives must base these decisions on reliable data - a single version of the truth is needed.  Of course this is much easier said than done, especially when the data must seamlessly flow across organizational boundaries.  Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), the grouping of inoperable services around business processes, has been positioned as the enabling technology that will allow companies to meet these rapidly changing business demands and exploit new business opportunities. 

According to analysts at Forrester Research, "effective management of customer and product master data are the cornerstone of any SOA".  The tools and processes responsible for the synchronization, validation and distribution of reference data across multiple transactional systems are referred to as Master Data Management (MDM).  Analysts at Gartner estimate MDM software represents approximately a $1.3B market opportunity, forecasted to reach $3.0B by 2012. 

Behind the scenes major vendors such as SAP and Microsoft have been feverishly executing their SOA roadmap with key MDM solution acquisitions.  In 2004, SAP purchased A2i, a California based provider of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions.   In 2007, Microsoft acquired Georgia-based Enterprise Dimension Management (EDM) provider, Stratature.  The official Microsoft MDM solution codenamed, "Bulldog", is expected to make its inaugural appearance as part of the Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) offering.  It will most likely touch larger enterprise installations of Microsoft Dynamics AX as part of Corporate Performance Management (CPM) solution Performance Point (now part of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Enterprise Edition).

The soon-to-be-released Intelligent Data Management (IDM) for Microsoft Dynamics AX should not be confused ...