MDM Mashups: All the Taste with None of the Calories
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MDM mashups can be like diet soda - all the taste without the calories
All the taste but none of the calories. Who doesn’t want that?
In the MDM world, architects are hard at work trying to address this hybrid through mashups, with a goal to deliver all the benefits of trusted and accurate data without the associated complexities of drawn-out, multi-year implementations.
Mashups are lightweight applications rapidly composed by combining web-based services. They are the one of the pillars of Web2.0 programming. Essentially, a mashup combines data and/or functionality from multiple external sources to create a new service. The key is the speed – mashups are fast.
Your average Gmail page is, in essence, a mashup because it combines a host of Google services into a single landing page (mail, search, buzz, maps, contacts, RSS reader and more).
So how is this relevant to MDM? It turns out that mashups do not have to be restricted to the Web2.0 world. One of the simplest ways to understand this is to visit http://www.packagemapping.com. Enter one of your old FedEx tracking numbers and see what happens. (Go ahead, I will wait… )
From an MDM perspective, each data source in an enterprise exists to provide a new service. You as an enlightened CIO, CMIO (Chief Medical Information Officer), Director of IT or Director of Customer Data have decided to invest in MDM because you want to benefit from trusted accurate data.
The challenge lies in investing in the plumbing that must exist before the “clean” data is reconnected and flows seamlessly to the various end users in their current day jobs. You need these end users to access the clean data to get ROI from your MDM purchase.
So can a mashup help connect the dots between MDM and end users?
Yes! We recently worked with an extremely smart financial services customer on a similar project. They purchased our MDM hub, used it to clean their customer data but did not stop there.
They realized that there is value in leveraging the clean data as quickly as possible in their existing high cost process for detecting risk exposure. So they built a mashup to combine data from three sources: 1) the Initiate MDM hub; 2) a real-time data lookup from a reference data provider; 3) the services of a credit risk analysis provider.
With this mashup in place, the customer can rapidly combine these capabilities into an application that is placed in front of their best customer onboarding analyst. This is powerful stuff!
This mashup helps our customer tangibly understand the value of a hub and better leverage this value into their existing business process. In turn, this mashup will help them take a phased approach to the ultimate plumbing. But most importantly, they do not have to wait till the plumbing is complete to see ROI.
Maybe this MDM mashup is not quite Diet Dr Pepper, but it is an improvement nonetheless. A lot of this is not new and there is a significant amount of complexity under the covers.
My intent is to see if we can collectively re-examine the premises. A lot has changed in the last few years and with REST-based services rapidly gaining acceptance, it might be time to revisit your approach to enterprise architecture, especially when investing in technology that is closer to your infrastructure layer than application layer.
Once you get into the actual nitty gritty of enterprise mashups, there is plenty to read. Enterprise Mashup Markup Language, or EMML, is being promoted by The Open Mashup Alliance as standards begin to take shape.
Do you have examples of creative MDM mashups that may be even more exciting than diet cola? Share them below.
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Ah great post Amar !!!
There has been a growth in the market for mashups... being able to connect to several resources, mine that information, plue business managers and analysts are able to mash together an interface that provides them timely, right sourced information.
There is so much potential for this solution and MDM is going to benefit from it... not mention the business community..
The only concern I see is the governance question: how do we manage access to the data sources for these mashing tools ? how will we insure governance of that the new data from the interfaces created by mashups ? Will the pressures of this new Agile solution for business operations put a crunch on IT to make data sources become more open or provide rights to the data... (giving someone a new tool, they will want more control & more data & more more more...)
IBM has Mashup Center as a solution, and it has proven to be a valuable tool, and someone with a creative sense can pull together amazing solutions, as long as they have right info from the right system, and the right time... wait isn't that what MDM's role
Great to see the emergence of niche solutions grow into a mainstream.
Thanks for the post Amar... keep it up...
Hi Garnie,
At this stage without taking data governance into consideration you have exacerbated the problem not mitigated it. I am sure control around authoring is not a new problem. All the supply-chain folks will kill me if I dare say otherwise.
Thanks for the comment.
Definitely agree on your observation. The logical next step to building a lightweight mashup application is to help the power user turn into their authoring tool of choice
I am excited with the possibilities around the enterprise mashup trend. I hope it drives more customers to demand smaller footprint, quicker ROI proofs from their vendors. In the long run, we will continue to have incremental sales from happy customers and maybe, just maybe demystify some of of the haze around mdm to your average corporate citizen.