“Cross-enterprise MDM adoption will remain extremely rare” says Rob Karel. While Aaron Zornes expects “multi-style MDM to increase”, he also expects “multi-hub connectivity from best-of-breeds”. To put it into other words, as another analyst does “most firms will deploy two or more MDM technologies for quite a time”. Definitely “users will struggle to make MDM work unless they address some really hard challenges”. One of these hard challenges is in my own opinion how to create an MDM ecology or environment in which multiple business entities can be maintained in an efficient and proper manner. E.g. how do you cope with MDM for customer data (CDI) and MDM for product data (PIM), this requires deep knowledge of the specific business requirements and needs. It will certainly need well-educated Data Stewards. As predicted by the analysts: “data governance frameworks get attention” and “data quality metrics redefined”.

One of the analysts expects that “MDM costs go up as skills decline”, but in the current situation with scarce financial resources we will see hopefully more “pragmatic improvements to data quality in 2009″. I my opinion we will certainly see that “the data quality market will grow as customers recognize it as a cheaper precursor to MDM”. “SaaS, cloud, and open source software will not affect the MDM market that much for the foreseeable future”, because it can bring extra risks and costs to organisations. Let’s not forget that most (commercial) organisations are unfamiliar with implementing and supporting open source software. If “IBM, Oracle overcome MDM obstacles” than we can expect to see that in 2009 “mega-vendors still dominate”. And that MDM to reach more industries especially if MDM will focus more on different business drivers; “expect a messaging shift from MDM vendors to promote how MDM can mitigate risk”. As long as SOA will need MDM more and more, you can expect to see that “the MDM market consolidation will continue” and finally a “market stabilization by 2012″.