Happy New Year! As we kick off 2012, I’d like to reflect on what was accomplished during the past year in the “trusted data” areas of master data management (MDM), data quality (DQ), and data governance and consider what we might expect in the year to come. I also hear quite a bit of noise from vendors and analysts alike about what they want the MDM market to be in 2012, so I wanted to share my thoughts on what’s real and what (in my opinion) remains hype. 

I also just completed Forrester’s December 2011 Global MDM Survey of 274 MDM professionals. While the majority of those results will be shared in the annual MDM Trends research that I’ll be publishing later in Q1, here’s a taste of some of the intriguing results.

Let’s first reflect on what I’ve witnessed from my clients’ MDM journeys throughout 2011:

• Data governance remained a challenge. In the abovementioned MDM survey, only 20% responded that they have a high or very high level of data governance maturity, indicating that significant work remains. But on the positive side, I’m witnessing increasing business sponsorship and prioritization, which has helped many organizations pilot programs to cut their teeth and build some repeatable processes, foundational policies, and early measurements to start building a case to increase data governance investment and momentum.
• Multidomain MDM hit its stride. User interest in multidomain MDM strategies has finally caught up with vendors’ product capabilities and messaging. In Forrester’s MDM Survey, 47% responded that the scope of their MDM programs include more than two data domains to master, while another 9% are focused on dual-domain solutions (e.g, customer and product).

As one of the industry-renowned data visualization experts Edward Tufte once said, “The world is complex, dynamic, multidimensional; the paper is static, flat. How are we to represent the rich visual world of experience and measurement on mere flatland?” There’s indeed just too much information out there to be effectively analyzed by all categories of knowledge workers. More often than not, traditional tabular row-and-column reports do not paint the whole picture or — even worse — can lead an analyst to a wrong conclusion. There are multiple reasons to use data visualization; the three main ones are that one:

• Cannot see a pattern without data visualization. Simply seeing numbers on a grid often does not tell the whole story; in the worst case, it can even lead one to a wrong conclusion. This is best demonstrated by Anscombe’s quartet, where four seemingly similar groups of x and y coordinates reveal very different patterns when represented in a graph.
• Cannot fit all of the necessary data points onto a single screen. Even with the smallest reasonably readable font, single line spacing, and no grid, one cannot realistically fit more than a few thousand data points using numerical information only. When using advanced data visualization techniques, one can fit tens of thousands data points onto a single screen — a difference of an order of magnitude. In The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Edward Tufte gives an example of more than 21,000 data points effectively displayed on a US map that fits onto a single screen.

Cloud-based alternatives to message archiving are an increasingly attractive option for enterprise buyers. Budgetary constraints, coupled with increasing compliance regulations and eDiscovery needs, are compelling companies to search for message archiving solutions that offer a broad set of functionality at an attractive price. With today’s extended enterprise, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model is top of mind as companies look to garner the cost-saving benefits and deployment advantages that this model can deliver. Strong adoption is well on its way. Among organizations rolling out message archiving in 2011, over one-fifth plan to implement a cloud-based solution, and I expect this number will only grow in 2012. For an evaluation of key vendors and key market shifts, Forrester clients can access the market overview on SaaS-based message archiving that we published last month.

A cloud-based solution is a viable solution for many, but message archiving professionals shouldn’t see these offerings as a panacea. Before embarking on taking message archiving to the cloud, make sure you’ve done your homework on vendor and contractual issues and continue to address the strategy, policy, and process challenges as you would with other in-house alternatives. Whether you’re rolling out your first message archiving solution or are planning to carry over your legacy application, make sure you're taking the necessary precautions to make sure that your implementation is a success.

“… and they lived happily ever after.” This is the typical ending of most Hollywood movies, which is why I am not a big fan. I much prefer European or independent movies that leave it up to the viewer to draw their own conclusions. It’s just so much more realistic. Keep this in mind, please, as you read this blog, because its only purpose is to present my point of view on what’s happening in the cloud BI market, not to predict where it’s going. I’ll leave that up to your comments — just like your own thoughts and feelings after a good, thoughtful European or indie movie.

Market definition

First of all, let’s define the market. Unfortunately, the terms SaaS and cloud are often used synonymously and therefore, alas, incorrectly.

• SaaS is just a licensing structure. Many vendors (open source, for example) offer SaaS software subscription models, which has nothing to do with cloud-based hosting.
• Cloud, in my humble opinion, is all about multitenant software hosted on public or private clouds. It’s not about cloud hosting of traditional software innately architected for single tenancy.