At the recent MDM Summit conference in San Francisco, I attended the "MDM Boot Camp" session put on by Aaron Zornes and Ed Allburn with my colleague, Maureen Butler.

I've attended five MDM Summit conferences at this point, but never had a chance to catch the Boot Camp session before. My colleagues and I work pretty hard at staying current on Master Data Management, so it was interesting to hear what Aaron and Ed had to say.

One of the first things Aaron said was "the world is flat, so data structures and business processes must be flexible, and IT must be able to enable new business models." I've finally gotten around to reading "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman, so I really liked the idea of tying MDM to the increased agility that enterprises are struggling to achieve in order to remain competitive and relevant.

Another tie-in was the extent to which many firms are now using mergers & acquisitions as a core part of their business strategy, and the degree to which Master Data Management is critical to enabling smooth integration of acquired companies.

Aaron did a great recap of the three classic "use cases" for MDM: Operational, Analytical and Collaborative, and reviewed the top five justifications for MDM initiatives.

He reviewed the "strategic planning assumptions" that the MDM Institute has published, covering the expected market maturation, momentum, consolidation and diversification; recent issues around budgets and skills; the importance of data governance; the architectural trends towards multi-domain MDM and service-oriented architecture (SOA); the move toward improved identity resolution, data quality and analytics; and the trend towards 4th generation "policy hubs" and enterprise search.

Maureen and I thoroughly enjoyed the session; it was a great way to kick off our three days at the MDM Summit.  We're looking forward already to the Fall 2008 MDM Summit at the New York Hilton (Oct. 19–21, 2008).

We're really looking forward to the MDM Summit conference in San Francisco, which runs from Sunday, March 30th through Tuesday, April 1st.

This is a very exciting space. Over the past few years, we've seen the mega-vendors like Oracle, IBM and SAP get more and more interested in master data management. We've seen the best-of-breed providers like D&B/Purisma, Initiate Systems and Siperian doing very well, as they enhance their products and grow their customer bases. And we've seen the "piling on" factor, as companies from all over the enterprise software spectrum re-brand and re-purpose their products for the MDM market.

This is my fifth MDM Summit, and at every one that we attend, we learn more - about the technology of course, but also about the people and personalities that drive the business, about the software vendors and systems integrators, and the end user companies and how they're succeeding with MDM.

I've always loved using technology to solve business problems. And master data management really appeals to me there - it's a great combination of better technology, better processes and better people/organization, resulting in better information, which can in turn solve some really big business problems.

It's great to get together twice a year at Aaron Zornes' and SourceMedia's MDM Summit conferences. They're very well-done, and it's a great place to see people, catch up on what's happening in the business, and hear the latest success stories.

So if you're going to be in San Francisco, please look me up. You can drop me a note via our web site or give me a ring at 781-836-4875.