Expand your SOA initiatives: Orchestrate new applications with Master Data Management (MDM)

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1 E-Guide Orchestrate new applications with Master Data Management (MDM) Many organizations today acknowledge that service-oriented architecture (SOA) is still going strong. Businesses that already use SOA are expanding their SOA initiatives and new businesses are starting to adopt SOA and to implement SOA technologies. Furthermore, industry experts say that SOA and master data management (MDM) are hand-in-glove concepts. Read this E-guide and explore SOA management best practices and considerations for any MDM strategy. Learn how organizations can leverage open source middleware to integrate on-premise data and applications with cloudbased deployments. Sponsored By:

2 E-Guide Orchestrate new applications with Master Data Management (MDM) Table of Contents Forrester analysts: SOA still strong MDM, SOA, cloud computing connect data with enterprise architecture Data management provider Talend acquires Sopera, SOA platform and middleware provider Resources from Talend Sponsored By: Page 2 of 9

3 Forrester analysts: SOA still strong SOA is still going strong. Businesses that already use SOA are expanding their SOA initiatives and new businesses are starting to adopt SOA and to implement SOA technologies. The first-time SOA infrastructure purchase is shifting from ESBs to other technologies. According to a recent survey from Forrester analytics, SOA still has strong penetration and high satisfaction rates. About 75% of enterprise respondents and 80% of small to midsized businesses that responded are planning on expanding their use of SOA. Back in 2009, the Global 200 enterprises had shown a drop in satisfaction. Only 18% responded that SOA was meeting all or most of their expectations. In 2010, this number rose to 33%, which is more in line with earlier years. The utilities/telecom sector and the financial/insurance sector are still leading other verticals in terms of SOA adoption and satisfaction. Healthcare and public sectors still trail behind the rest of the pack. Geographically, North America and Europe show similar penetration patterns for SOA, but North America shows higher satisfaction rates. Probably the most interesting finding of the survey is that interest in ESBs which have been seen as the starting point for SOA architecture is actually declining. While in 2009, 48% of respondents who had only made a single SOA purchase had an ESB. In 2010, that number dropped to 39%. According to Forrester analyst Randy Hefner, the shift of focus away from ESBs stems from the increasing similarity of SOA specialty products (like SOA management tools and SOA appliances) as well as a desire to make SOA simpler and stronger. Sponsored By: Page 3 of 9

4 MDM, SOA, cloud computing connect data with enterprise architecture If you have good services but bad data, the [users] who judge you will still think you have bad services. So says Dan Power, president and founder of consulting firm Hub Solution Designs Inc. in Hingham, Mass. That s why Power and other industry experts say that service-oriented architecture (SOA) and master data management (MDM) are hand-in-glove concepts. Cloud computing, meanwhile, may cover both bases. Further, the newer MDM technologies are designed from the ground up to be service oriented, according to Aaron Zornes, chief research officer at The MDM Institute in Burlingame, Calif. MDM being newer-age technology is naturally SOA based, he said. Zornes continued, SOA is useless without MDM content. SOA doesn t address data; it only addresses processes. What s the use of having SOA if you re not taking care of the data side? He added, The same thing for MDM. MDM is really a misnomer. MDM is not really a data hub; MDM is actually a process hub. In addition to storing data you re executing a bunch of rules in some BPM [business process management] system. So it s much more than a database; it s really a process hub. Once an organization has an MDM hub, an SOA is the best way to orchestrate new applications with that data, Power said. What do you use to shuttle that data around? Now people aren t using file transfer or ETL; they re using SOA Oracle Fusion middleware, SAP NetWeaver, etc. and the older ETL products have evolved to become SOA aware. In fact, the large SOA leaders have all been moving into MDM. Forrester Research, in a February 2011 report on MDM trends, said consolidation was a big theme for 2010, with a number of large data management software vendors picking off the best and brightest of MDM pure plays. Sponsored By: Page 4 of 9

5 The SOA people have been busy building services and ESBs, but you if look at the MDM products, they provide this out of the box, Zornes said. Oracle and IBM in particular have 300 to 400 SOA services built into their [MDM] systems. Yet in some cases, MDM and SOA efforts are like parallel universes. It s been a decade since SOA [came to the fore] and people still don t get it, said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink. A lot still think it s Web services, and they totally ignore MDM. But for those who really are figuring out there s a lot to be gained in making loosely coupled services, they re also figuring out they need the data element too. MDM and SOA efforts are starting to come together, Power said, led by enterprise architects who realize these initiatives need to coincide. People designing services are working with data architects and enterprise architects so it s all one initiative; you can t worry about the data later on, he said. Previously, Power said, SOA people would deliver snazzy services but the data coming out wouldn t work or would be dirty or there was no validation. People wised up. You have to get the master data people involved from the beginning. Savvy organizations get master data teams and SOA teams together and say Thou shalt work together from day one. The momentum behind cloud computing is helping to move these disciplines together. MDM is the data pairing to the architectural philosophy of SOA, Schmelzer said. A lot of times if companies are pursuing these two things together they will see symbiotic benefits. The irony is that if companies are moving to the cloud they re kind of getting both; they re getting MDM whether they know it or not, and they re getting SOA whether they know it or not. The cloud is really starting to put a merger on getting those two things in sync. Security remains a concern for MDM in the cloud, however, Power said. The master data world has been a little slower to adopt cloud, but it s starting to happen. Master data is among the most private and sensitive data companies have; it s the crown jewels. It is still early days for MDM, according to the Forrester report, with data governance, data integration, and data quality maturity impacting MDM maturity. The study found that only Sponsored By: Page 5 of 9

6 17% of survey respondents felt that they had a high or very high level of MDM maturity, compared to 42% admitting low or very low levels of MDM maturity. For organizations considering an MDM initiative, expert advice sounds similar to the early days of SOA: Stop and think through data governance, Power said. Don t just blindly charge into MDM thinking it s a technology solution alone. You need a data governance organization that will own the technology people from the business side of things. Zornes added: Go data governance, go early; that s the war cry these days. You need to do some planning up front data modeling, data profiling, and start executing policies of data governance. Sponsored By: Page 6 of 9

7 Data management provider Talend acquires Sopera, SOA platform and middleware provider Talend, a provider of open source data management software, announced that it has acquired Sopera, a provider of open source SOA and middleware platforms, creating an open source middleware solution company that ranks among the top five global pure play open source vendors. Simultaneously, Talend completed a $34 million financing round led by Silver Lake Sumeru, a global leader in private investments in middle-market technology companies. Existing Talend investors Balderton Capital and IDInvest Partners (formerly AGF Private Equity) also participated in this round. The combination of Talend and Sopera positions it to take advantage of the synergies that exist between data management and application integration projects. IT organizations can now leverage a unified global middleware platform that costs far less than proprietary technologies, delivers greater functionality and is easier to deploy and manage. The unified platform will be optimized to seamlessly integrate on-premise data and applications with cloud-based deployments. With the acquisition, Sopera is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Talend and will become Talend s application integration division. Talend will retain Sopera employees and capitalize on their know-how, while investing to accelerate the global expansion of the newly formed division. The acquisition of Sopera is a critical step as we continue to evolve and grow our offerings and expand our market coverage; the new financing round, led by one of the largest and most successful technology investment firms in the world, is a major validation of our strategy, said Bertrand Diard, CEO and co-founder of Talend. In just four years, Talend has emerged as the undisputed leader in open source data management, democratizing this market. We are now poised to expand the leadership, innovation and value we deliver to our customers in adjacent markets. Our new offerings will enable us to expand into and democratize the application integration market, currently served primarily by traditional proprietary solutions from vendors such as TIBCO, Software AG and Progress Software. Sponsored By: Page 7 of 9

8 The data management and application integration markets are quickly converging as they address many of the same technical requirements and customer pain points, added Fabrice Bonan, COO and co-founder of Talend. We are uniquely positioned to deliver open source solutions into these growing markets, and our acquisition of Sopera will accelerate these efforts. The Sopera ASF product is based on the popular Apache ServiceMix, Apache CXF, and Apache ActiveMQ projects and forms the basis for the Eclipse Swordfish SOA runtime project. Talend is committed to continuing support for the Eclipse project and to growing our relationship with the Apache Software Foundation as we contribute to and use these projects in our existing and future offerings. Today, more and more enterprise IT departments are using open source technologies to drive their operations, said John Brennan, managing director at Silver Lake Sumeru. Talend is a clear leader in the open source data management market, and Silver Lake Sumeru is excited to work closely with them to support their current and future expansion. With Silver Lake Sumeru s investment, Brennan will join Talend s board of directors. Since our initial investment in Talend, the accomplishments of the company have been impressive and exceeded our own high expectations, said Bernard Liautaud, general partner at Balderton Capital, founder and ex-ceo of Business Objects, and a Talend board member. We are at the beginning of a new era of growth for the company and we are excited to see Talend expand its lead from the open source data management market into the broader middleware space. Talend will announce the impact of the acquisition on its new product roadmap, both for its new application integration division and its core data management products, within 30 days. Sponsored By: Page 8 of 9

9 Resources from Talend Talend Open Source ESB Download White paper: Top 10 Reasons to Choose an Open Source Application Integration Solution About Talend Talend is the recognized market leader in open source data management & application integration. Talend democratizes application integration by providing open source solutions to address any integration challenge from simple departmental projects to complex, heterogeneous IT environments. Talend application integration solutions powered by leading Apache open source projects Apache CXF, Apache Camel and Apache ActiveMQ allow organizations to easily integrate and expand systems and applications with minimal upfront investment. Unlike proprietary, closed solutions, which can only be afforded by the largest organizations, Talend makes middleware solutions available to organizations of all sizes, for all integration needs. Sponsored By: Page 9 of 9