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    New MDM Tools Make Information Governance Valuable, Despite Still Emerging Demand

    Data governance is one of the tougher nuts to crack when it comes to managing enterprise data. It requires business users who are vested in data, but often, governance and data quality work is “tacked on” in addition to other responsibilities. At the same time, governance also can be heavily technical, which requires IT involvement.

    Apparently, vendors got the memo, because they’re investing more in information stewardship and governance, according to Gartner’s most recent MDM Magic Quadrant reports. Both the Magic Quadrant reports for product and customer data make note of this trend.

    Data stewardship and governance tools are not new, of course. The report notes that vendors have been supporting these functions since 2012 with better user interfaces and workflows.

    Last year, some cutting edge vendors began to separate data stewardship capabilities from more technical governance tasks, the report notes. This year, that trend continued across all MDM products, with vendors adding more support for data profiling, visualization and manipulation, reporting and workflows.

    “Across every aspect of MDM — product, customer and multidomain — stewardship tools are turning into solutions called information stewardship applications,” Gartner writes. “This is an exciting trend, as it shows the relevance of master data to business users in terms of business value and impact.”

    Still, it seems organizations are not quite where they should be when it comes to putting their money where their needs are. “Although demand is still emerging, it is clear that early-adopter organizations recognize the value of these capabilities,” the report states. To me, that suggests a disconnect between what organizations need to do and what they’re willing to do.

    Experts believe this will change as businesses become more data-driven. In “The Forrester Wave: Data Governance Tools, Q2 2014,” analysts Henry Peyret and Michele Goetz predict the push toward data-driven business decisions will force stakeholders to address this disconnect.

    “As organizations begin to exploit the value of data for strategy and operations, they recognize that data governance has to be about helping the business realize the value potential in data,” Peyret and Goetz state. “As such, stakeholders in marketing, sales, customer service, and finance are becoming much more involved and accountable.”

    For more on this topic, read my previous post, “Reasons Business Users Are Embracing Data Governance.” Both the customer and product data MDM Magic Quadrant reports are available for free download on Tibco’s site.

    Loraine Lawson is a veteran technology reporter and blogger. She currently writes the Integration blog for IT Business Edge, which covers all aspects of integration technology, including data governance and best practices. She has also covered IT/Business Alignment and IT Security for IT Business Edge. Before becoming a freelance writer, Lawson worked at TechRepublic as a site editor and writer, covering mobile, IT management, IT security and other technology trends. Previously, she was a webmaster at the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and a newspaper journalist. Follow Lawson at Google+ and on Twitter.

    Loraine Lawson
    Loraine Lawson
    Loraine Lawson is a freelance writer specializing in technology and business issues, including integration, health care IT, cloud and Big Data.

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