Gartner: too few companies link SOA to master data management

Both SOA and master data management (MDM) come from similar modes of thinking. Both approaches encourage enterprise approaches to problem solving. However, to date, Gartner's Andrew White reports he hasn't seen a lot of efforts to link MDM to SOA, but maybe more should.

As White observes in a recent post:

"In doing over 45 reference calls for last summer’s Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management of Product Data, I found two customers that explicitly had connected their MDM strategy to their SOA strategy.  That is a terribly low number – but not surprising to me.  The weakness this exposes in many SOA strategies is that it creates a huge risk factor that threatens to undermine SOA and lead to failure."

Why is there such linkage between SOA and MDM? As White puts it, SOA is still seen as a tactical strategy (application integration, etc.), and MDM is more of a strategic consideration. "Most SOA oriented spend is focused on tactical improvement centered on integration currently existing applications.  At some point, as SOA becomes more strategic, MDM will get another fillip in the arm in terms of demand.  SOA runs the risk of being DOA without MDM (in complex environments)."

There risk and potential for failure in not linking SOA to MDM? As White puts it, SOA needs to elevate to more strategic levels to be of value to the business. But this value could be dragged down with high costs if "every SOA-based application interaction had to incur the costs of data reconciliation, mapping, clean up, etc." The bottom line, White says, is "SOA needs MDM to help with the evolution of the information infrastructure."

As SOA has evolved into the mainstream of many businesses, attention is turning to the data flowing through newly SOA-enabled processes. SOA is only as good as the data it provides.