Teradata announced today the immediate availability of Teradata Master Data Management (MDM) 2.0, which gives companies new capabilities to ensure that all master data (definitive data pertaining to customers, products and suppliers) is integrated and accurate. The first order for Teradata MDM 2.0 has just been placed by The Hershey Company, an existing Teradata Warehouse client.

Master data management is becoming a strategic priority for business and technology professionals who are under pressure to improve the quality and consistency of data. This is supported by analyst firms such as Forrester Research, with analysis projecting the annual growth rate of MDM at over 50 percent per year. “Forrester expects the MDM market to reach $6.7 billion by 2010, with year-over-year growth averaging between 55% and 59%.”

“Much more than a process for establishing data definitions, master data management is an authoritative, referential intelligence environment with a direct impact on a company’s analytical insight as well as its operational systems,” said Dr. Claudia Imhoff, president and founder of Intelligent Solutions, a leading BI consultancy. “An enterprise MDM environment can provide deeper and faster business visibility, bull’s-eye accuracy, and powerful synchronicity across the enterprise – for more intelligent decision making and business performance. Wherever executives realize this, MDM escalates to a top corporate priority.”

Relevant MDM initiatives at Intel, Lowe’s, American Express and other companies are documented in a recent downloadable white paper titled “What’s Your Strategy for Master Data Management?” prepared by Michael Goul, professor of information systems, W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University.

Teradata MDM enables companies to create and manage a definitive single view of its most valuable data – a consistent master reference for the entire enterprise – which helps ensure timely availability of complete, accurate data in a common language for better planning and optimal decision-making. It brings economies to the business via reduced labor on data preparation, management, and interface development; and reduced time on data maintenance. MDM also supports rapid reconfiguration of business processes across the enterprise and provides data synchronization while leveraging existing platforms and legacy applications.

“Many companies still have critical data buried in a number of disparate data repositories – with different labels, identifiers and meanings – which can be a source of significant business error and risk across multiple processes,” said Mark Shainman, MDM program director for Teradata. “Our newest version of Teradata MDM makes integrating, managing and sharing of master data much more efficient and effective. It is highly optimized for the Teradata platform, with market-leading functionality.”

Shainman said that poorly managed master data has resulted in serious business challenges for many companies, especially within their analytical environments. The inability to reconcile and integrate data fed from multiple operational sources into their data warehousing environment leads to inaccurate analytics, tedious decision-making cycles, missed opportunities, inefficiency and reduced profitability. For these reasons, Shainman sees the demand for Teradata MDM as very promising across industries. Since its launch, Teradata MDM has been adopted by leading companies ranging from banking to manufacturing of computer chips and consumer packaged goods. Teradata MDM 2.0 dramatically extends the business value of the current Teradata MDM solution with new features such as:

-- improved master data manageability with advanced visualization of hierarchies

-- capabilities to profile master data in the development and runtime environments

-- a new packaged MDM sample application, based on a CDI (Customer Data Integration) model

-- new publishing services: a robust, flexible easy-to-use framework for managing the publication of master data to consuming applications, processes, or users

-- enhanced security uniquely designed for MDM protection enhanced web services functionality

-- deeply enhanced database optimization to ensure maximum performance and utility aligned with the Teradata platform

-- integration with market leading data quality tools such as Trillium and Firstlogic

-- expanded operating system and Java Application Server platform support enhanced, cost-effective, technical supportability

In addition to Teradata MDM and data warehouse solutions, industry logical data models and technology consulting business, Teradata has formed an MDM center of expertise with dedicated employees in sales, marketing, consulting and development.