Mastering Data Management

More in MDM

• Best Practices in Test Data Management: Discovering and Subsetting
• TDWI Chicago Preview: Data Warehousing, Analytics & More
• Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Data?
• MDM for Chief Privacy Officers: A healthcare provider example

Share this Post

Recent Comments

• ICMCC News Page » Where East Meets West: ehealth in China and the US on Where East Meets West: ehealth in China and the US
• Kim’s Training Podcast on Training as a Safety Net: Kim May
• TDWI Chicago Preview: Data Warehousing, Analytics & More | Mastering Data Management on New ebook: Understanding Big Data

IBM InfoSphere MDM now uses the probabilistic matching developed by Initiate

"Can I use the Initiate Master Data Service matching technology in an IBM InfoSphere Master Data Management Server hub?"

Since IBM’s 2010 announcement that it was acquiring Initiate Systems, this question has been asked by many IBM Master Data Management customers and prospects—and for good reason. The Initiate Master Data Service has received broad recognition for its probabilistic MDM matching technology. It has been installed by hundreds of organizations worldwide in environments which demand the highest levels of matching accuracy: hospital patient registration, retail pharmacy customer identification, person-of-interest entity resolution, etc.

InfoSphere MDM Server has received acclaim for its comprehensive data model and business services, making it a market leader for physical master data repositories. When high quality probabilistic matching and a trusted physical master record are both required, an MDM customer might want to utilize the best of both systems.

The latest release of IBM InfoSphere Master Data Management takes a significant step toward unifying IBM’s MDM portfolio and makes it easy to use the Initiate Master Data Service matching technology in an InfoSphere MDM Server hub.

In addition to supporting the prior matching options of classic deterministic matching and integration with InfoSphere QualityStage for probabilistic matching, the InfoSphere MDM Server technology in InfoSphere MDM V10.0 now includes Initiate Master Data Service matching technology as a fully integrated component. No external matching engine or independent matching hub is required.

InfoSphere MDM Server is delivered with the probabilistic matching component pre-configured for use with the party model, so it does not require knowledge of the Initiate Master Data Service technology to implement. The matching algorithms can optionally be tuned or modified using the Initiate Master Data Service Workbench or a newly released Probabilistic Matching Engine Console.

For users who decide to migrate from the IBM Initiate Master Data Service to InfoSphere MDM Server, the common probabilistic matching engine enables the same matching algorithms to be used in either system. Maintaining the same algorithms eliminates the time and expense of re-tuning and ensures consistency of matching results between the old and new systems. It also makes the most of in-house algorithm skills and expertise that customers have developed.

I will speak in more detail about InfoSphere MDM probabilistic matching at IBM’s upcoming Information on Demand 2011 event.  My session, Using Probabilistic Matching in InfoSphere MDM (#IMD-1885A) is on Thursday, October 27 from 11:30 – 12:30 in the Mandalay Bay North Convention Center - South Pacific J.  I look forward to seeing you there.

Several of my colleagues will be talking about additional aspects of IBM InfoSphere MDM v10 at IOD.  See the entire MDM track agenda to plan your visit. I look forward to seeing all of you at IOD.

Can’t attend IOD? We’re publishing several blog posts in coming days to give you more details on some of the features and use cases. See the list of posts and topics.