Research Reports
Machine Learning – Hot or Hype?
The topic of Machine Learning has received increasing attention from both software vendors and analysts. Indeed, many analysts have suggested that, together with big data, this is the new key focus area for businesses in the near future. This survey is aimed at understanding to what extent this view is reflected across the business community and what real world initiatives are planned or already in place. To address the question “Is Machine Learning really “hot” or just the next hype?”
_____
How Does Your Data Governance Initiative Stack Up?
This Information Difference survey returns to investigate the relationships between data governance, master data management (MDM) and data quality (DQ). In 2010 we conducted an in depth survey on this topic against the background of considerable media focus on the crucial importance of data governance and data quality initiatives to ensure the success of MDM implementations. Now, six years on, we return to this area in an effort to once again explore and understand what progress has been made over the years.
_____
How much are you spending on Data Management?
Recent surveys of the Information Technology market have suggested an overall increase in expenditure in 2015. What proportion of this increase will be devoted to the area of data management (including data governance, data quality, data warehousing and master data management) in 2015? How do you compare with your peers?
_____
Is the Data Warehouse Dead?
Big Data has generated much interest and attention in the media of late. Indeed, several authors have recently raised the question of whether Big Data approaches, such as Hadoop, will pronounce the death sentence on the conventional data warehouse.
_____
Data in the Clouds
Cloud computing has recently received wide press attention, however there is still surprisingly little concrete information available regarding the state of cloud computing initiatives in business. In this survey we investigate the adoption of cloud computing in depth.
_____
Big Data Revealed
The Information Difference survey, “Big Data Revealed”, was conducted over the Internet during the period October to November 2013. Although Big Data has recently received wide press attention, there is still surprisingly little concrete information available regarding the state of Big Data initiatives in business. We believed the time was ripe to survey this area in depth.
_____
The Adoption of MDM by Business Revisited
In April 2008, the Information Difference conducted a survey into the take-up and adoption of master data management (MDM) software. In 2013, we revisited this area to understand what has changed over the past five years.
_____
The State of Data Quality Revisited
Although the issue of data quality has been with us for decades now it still remains an area of concern and debate. In 2009 we conducted a detailed survey of the state of data quality across enterprises. In this survey we revisit the topic of data quality and examine what has changed over the past four years.
_____
Does Big Data Mean Big MDM?
There has been a great deal of recent interest in the industry about how to deal with so-called Big Data. Despite this media attention there is scant concrete information on how organizations are addressing the issues underlying Big Data. How does this relate, if at all, to master data management (MDM), and what are organizations doing to consider the impact of the Big Data trend on MDM initiatives? This survey aims to answer these questions.
_____
MDM Real-World Experiences
Master Data Management (MDM) is increasingly becoming a mature technology and successful implementations have been the subject of recent media attention. There is, however, little concrete information reflecting real-world experience of its adoption and implementation. This survey addresses this gap.
_____
MDM Market Research Survey 2012
Master Data Management (MDM) is increasingly becoming a mature technology and successful implementations have been the subject of recent media attention. There is, however, little concrete information reflecting real-world experience. We were interested to better understand the current experience of those enterprises with live MDM programs or plans to deploy MDM, and the challenges that drive interest in MDM.
_____
What’s the Link Between Data Governance and Success with MDM?
It has often been said that data governance is key to master data management (MDM), but is it? In this survey we wanted to get feedback from customers who have data governance activities and MDM projects, to see to what extent the two really are linked. In particular, we wanted to identify best (and worst) practice in data governance and MDM.
We conducted a survey, sponsored by Pitney Bowes Software, which was aimed at understanding better the views of businesses regarding their current data governance and MDM initiatives.
_____
Return on Investment (ROI) from Data Management Projects
Companies spend a lot of money on master data, data warehouse and data quality projects, but how successful are these initiatives in monetary terms? There is to date little information available relating to the return on these, often substantial, investments. In this survey, sponsored by Sand and Tibco, we explored how companies justify their expenditures, how they measure success, and how they assess their data management projects in monetary terms.
_____
Data Quality and MDM – The Missing Link?
Currently, master data management (MDM) and data quality are treated as separate markets, yet any MDM project has a significant data quality component. Many authors have highlighted in the media the crucial importance of data quality initiatives to ensuring the success of MDM implementations. There is, however, little information on the approach being adopted by organizations that have implemented or plan to implement MDM.
We have therefore conducted a survey, sponsored by Informatica and Talend, aimed at understanding better the views of businesses regarding their current data quality and MDM initiatives.
_____
How Reliable is your Data Warehouse?
Data warehousing has been with us for almost three decades now. More than 25 vendors currently offer a wide range of approaches and software products dedicated to data warehousing. These range from packaged applications to cloud-based solutions and data warehouse appliances. We have recently reviewed this area in our Data Warehouse Landscape 2011.
In the past, many data warehouse implementations gained the reputation of having a high failure rate, often delivering inconsistent data, with the consequence that businesses inevitably lost trust in their reliability. A root cause of this lack of reliability was that little or no attention was paid to ensuring the quality of the data loaded into the warehouse. Has the state of data warehousing in organizations improved over the past two decades?
_____
Data Governance Benchmarking Survey 2010
Data governance is gaining increasing importance and focus in the media, but how effective is it in practice? How does your organization stack up against others? The Information Difference, working together with The Data Governance Institute, has developed a framework for data governance that has been reviewed and vetted by an expert panel of multinational companies with well-established data governance activities. This report presents a detailed benchmarking survey into the various aspects of data governance across a wide range of organizations.
_____
How Data Governance Links MDM and Data Quality
Many authors have recently highlighted in the media the crucial importance of data governance and data quality initiatives to ensure the success of MDM implementations. There is, however, scant information on the approaches being adopted by organizations that have implemented or plan to implement MDM, or indeed those who have chosen not to implement data governance.
We were therefore interested to explore the linkage between data governance, master data and data quality. In particular, to discover how organizations are tackling this area in practice. Additionally, we wanted to understand the scale, scope and success rates of data governance in relation to MDM and data quality initiatives in business. We have therefore conducted a survey into the link between data governance, MDM and data quality.
_____
The Link Between Data Warehousing and MDM
“Analytic MDM” has become established as one of the styles of MDM implementation adopted by businesses needing to effect a significant improvement in the speed and quality of their business reporting, often centered around one or more national, regional or enterprise data warehouses.
This is unsurprising since the “dimensions” of a data warehouse are essentially master data (e.g., hierarchies of products, customers, locations, etc.). Despite the close relationship between MDM and data warehousing, a glance at even the recent literature on these topics reveals that these two important areas tend to be treated as entirely separate. We have therefore conducted a survey into the link between data warehousing and master data management.
_____
Master Data Management Projects in Practice
Master Data Management (MDM) has received growing attention recently as an essential component of information management alongside data governance and data quality. Alongside this growth in interest in master data management, the provision of services for the implementation of master data management is featuring with increasing prominence in the portfolio of services offered by many Systems Integrators (SIs).
While many SIs currently claim or suggest they have extensive implementation expertise in master data management, there is little concrete information available regarding the use of systems integrators by end-user organizations for implementing master data management programs in business. We have therefore conducted a survey of both end-user organizations and systems integrators aimed at gaining deeper insight into the levels of expertise, experience and usage of systems integrators specifically related to undertaking MDM implementations.
_____
The State of Data Quality Today
The topic of business data quality has been with us for decades. Given the large number of vendors offerings dedicated to resolving data quality (DQ) issues, one might be forgiven for believing that the problems have all but been resolved. A glance through the current literature reveals, however, that the problem of poor data quality is still very much alive.
Has the state of data quality in organizations improved over the past two decades? Or is data management, and data quality in particular, still in a ghastly state with organizations and senior management feeling that the problem is overwhelming? Despite the clear concerns from business and a plethora of software vendors, there is surprisingly little concrete information available regarding the state of data quality in business.
We have conducted a survey, sponsored by Pitney Bowes Business Insight and Silver Creek Systems, aimed at gaining deeper insight into the views of businesses regarding their current or planned data quality initiatives.
_____
Styles and Architectures for Master Data Management
Master data management (MDM) has emerged as a key area of information management in the last few years. Initially much of the architectural debate was about whether to be data domain-specific or not, with vendors focused on providing customer or product-specific hubs. In the past couple of years the industry has realised that organisations want a uniform approach to all their master data and vendors have started to address this requirement. There is, however, still a significant divide about the style of implementation, with some vendors specialising in certain areas, and some confusion has arisen around terms such as “operational MDM”, “registry” and “analytic MDM” used for various approaches to implementing MDM. Implementation approaches focus either on managing master data associated with business intelligence and reporting (termed analytic MDM) or managing master data associated with transactional systems (termed operational MDM). There has also been discussion of the use of federated approaches for MDM.
At The Information Difference we believe it is important for both organizations and vendors to understand how MDM is generally being implemented, so as to gain insight into the underlying reasons for the approaches selected and the available experience to date. We have therefore conducted a survey aimed at gaining deeper insight into the views and plans of businesses regarding their current or planned MDM initiatives, focused on the styles and architectures adopted or planned to be implemented.
_____
Impact of the Financial Crisis on MDM and Data Quality Initiatives
The recent financial crisis has had widespread impact on both individuals and businesses. It is against this background that a number of comments have appeared in the media urging businesses not to be distracted from their current IT plans but to focus even more on the areas that will bring growth. It seems entirely likely that consulting firms will be faced with delayed or cancelled projects and many software vendors will experience a slowdown in orders. But will most businesses realize that Master Data Management (MDM) and Data Quality (DQ) initiatives hold the key to delivering improved business information and therefore that it makes sense to pursue these initiatives even against the current economic background?
At The Information Difference we have conducted a survey aimed at gaining greater insight into the views and plans of businesses regarding their current or planned MDM and DQ initiatives. The objective of the survey was to explore the views of businesses on the impact of the financial crisis and “credit crunch” on their current and future plans for implementation of MDM and DQ.
92 respondents completed the survey from all around the world, the majority from North America (57%) and Europe (31%). Most of the respondents were from companies having annual revenues greater than US $ 1 billion and represented a wide spectrum of industries.
_____
Adoption of Data Governance by Business
Data Governance is the process of establishing and maintaining cooperation between lines of business to establish standards for how common business data and metrics will be defined, propagated, owned and enforced throughout the organization. It is closely related to master data management (MDM), which is the management of data that is shared between computer systems, such as customer, product, asset, location or contract.
The Information Difference has conducted a survey into the take-up and adoption of data governance by business. 233 participants took part in the survey, 60% from companies with over USD $1 billion in revenue. 20% of respondents hold the job title of “Chief Architect” and 16% are CxOs or VPs. 64% were from North America, 20% from Europe and the rest elsewhere. 38% were drawn from the business and the remainder from IT. The purpose of the study was to gain understanding of, among other factors, the level of take-up, business motivation and the preferred approach to implementation.
“The best survey I’ve seen on the topic to date” Jill Dyché, Partner, Baseline Consulting
_____
Growing Adoption of Master Data Management by Business?
Master Data is data that is shared between computer systems, such as customer, product, asset, location or contract. The management of this data is known as master data management (MDM). The mounting pressure on businesses to increase fiscal data compliance, accountability and transparency has driven a growing number of organizations to put a tentative toe into the waters of MDM. This has in part been fuelled by the explosion of publications in this area aimed at convincing businesses that the route to consistent business information lies in effective management of their master data. There is, however, scant concrete information relating to the motivation and adoption of MDM by business.
Against this background, The Information Difference has conducted a survey in April 2008 into the take-up and adoption of master data management (MDM) software. Data was collected for the survey from 112 participants with 65% representing businesses with revenues in excess of USD 1 billion. Some 56% were from North America and 24% from Europe. The purpose of the study was to gain understanding of amongst other factors the level of take up, the business motivation and the preferred approach to implementation.
