Collaborative MDM and PIM

Harsha Kapre Posted by Harsha Kapre • 24 October 2011 • Print This Post Print This Post

Harsha explains how PIM is evolving, making it an ideal solution for other collaborative and business process-driven use cases

MDM implementations have shown us that centralized product information that is both consistent and reliable accelerates speed to market, drives timely eCommerce initiatives, and leads to effective up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.  Customers continue to express that in order to compete effectively, they must get accurate, complete and relevant customer information as quickly as possible.

By establishing a single view of product master data, these businesses are enabled to effectively manage their strategic initiatives to provide the right product, at the best price, through the right channel, for each customer.

Just a couple of years ago, my conversations with clients focused on defining Product Information Management (PIM) and understanding the value of centralized information. Today, more and more organizations have not only recognized the need for PIM but they have gone a step further and begun to associate PIM use cases with other domains.

In response to customer evolutions around PIM, we are now renaming Infosphere MDM Server for PIM to InfoSphere MDM Collaborative Edition. The underlying product/technology remains the same, but the name has been changed to better align with our capabilities and customers’ use of this collaborative, workflow-driven and process-centric solution to manage multiple domains beyond product.

Collaborative Edition still retains heavy focus on PIM, but the broad capabilities and flexibility of the platform make it an ideal solution for other collaborative and business process-driven use cases.

As we continue to work closely with our customers around the world, we see more and more that they are leveraging Collaborative Edition to manage not only products, but locations, suppliers, assets, organizations, categories and more. These customers have helped take us to the next step as we focus on the collaborative capabilities that are at the center of these multiple domains.

I will be speaking more in depth about the capabilities of Collaborative Edition at this year’s IOD11 conference in Las Vegas. In addition to a deep dive on the product (Session #2237A, Tues Oct 25 at 11:15 AM in Breakers I-J), I will also be speaking alongside one of our business partners as he takes us through some interesting case studies in the parts and manufacturing industries (SessionIMD-2820A, Thurs Oct 27, 8:15 AM in Tradewinds E).

There will be several other booths and sessions related to Collaborative Edition and the overall IBM MDM portfolio. 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 to give you more details on some of the features and use cases. See the list of posts and topics.


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2 Responses »

  1. Sathyaraj
    26 October 2011 • 12:38 pm

    Hi Harsha,

    I work as a Business Analyst in the MDM domain and was surprised to know of the name change from Infosphere MDM Server for PIM to InfoSphere MDM Collaborative Edition.

    I also see that there are 3 more solutions viz. IBM InfoSphere MDM Standard Edition, IBM InfoSphere MDM Advanced Edition, and IBM InfoSphere MDM Enterprise Edition. Could you elucidate how they all differ.

    Also how MDM server for customer master fits into the overall picture.

    Thanks.

  2. Harsha Kapre
    31 October 2011 • 11:22 am

    Hi Sathyaraj,

    Collaborative Edition replaces MDM Server for PIM to recognize the fact that many of our customers are using this workflow-driven, process-centric solution to manage multiple domains beyond product such as asset, location and organization. We continue to have high focus on the product domain and the product itself has not changed. We are simply changing the name to reflect how the collaborative use cases helps tie managment of these multiple domains together.

    The various editions are related to our new packaging but the products themselves are not changing. You can think of it like this:

    Collaborative Edition --> MDM Collaboration Server (MDM4PIM)
    Standard Edition --> Initiate MDS
    Advanced Edition --> MDM Server + Initiate MDS
    Enterprise Edition --> MDM Collaboration Server + MDM Server + Initiate MDS

    I hope that answers your questions.

    Thanks,

    Harsha
    Product Manager, MDM Collaboration Server

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