MDM 3.0 and MDM 5.5

Question

Hi All,
Can any body tell  what are the differences between MDM 3.0 and MDM 5.5?
Regards,
Nikhil

Answer 1

MDM 3.0
Strengths
• Supply chain expertise
• Global metadata synchronization expertise – especially important to Consumer Packaged
Goods and Retail industries
• 3rd generation hub architecture with near term 4th generation features (image/content
management of A2i)
Weaknesses
• Few production references
• Early ramp up sites included: Deutsche Telekom, Dorel/PacificCycle, ENEL, General
Electric Consumer and Industrial, Heineken, Kingfisher Group, Nestlé, Nokia, Pemex,
Purdue University, Rubbermaid, Shell Europe, Tesoro Petroleum, Weyerhauser,
Whirlpool
• Can be purchased only “on approval of SAP executive management on case by case
basis”
• Batch emphasis; on-line capability not suitable for high transaction rates in large-scale
B2B or B2C scenarios
• Emphasis on product/supplier capabilities rather than customer/employee
• Lack of strong SI channel (the number of SIs promoting NetWeaver is a good channel,
however, the subset that are catering to SAP MDM is far smaller)
• Under invested in marketing
• No longer supported after 2012
MDM 5.5
Strengths
• Support for single view of all major objects – customer, product, supplier and employee
(albeit lightweight customer and employee)
• Focused on interactive cleansing and distribution of Material, Supplier, Customer, and
Employee master data within (SAP R/3-based) ERP environment; note that several large
organizations are using it outside of a SAP ERP environment such as GE and
Rubbermaid
• Global metadata synchronization expertise
• Product information management focus
o Fully integrated electronic and print publishing
o High performance parametric search across rich content
• Hierarchical management
• Integration with SAP infrastructure
• 4th generation data hub features (image/content management of A2i)
• English, French and German initial support; Japanese 3Q2005
Weaknesses
• Minimal references (Whirlpool)
• Currently only supports “master data harmonization” – no automated central authority for
master data and therefore cannot enforce centralized/corporate data quality standards
• Focused on interactive cleansing and distribution of Material, Supplier, Customer, and
Employee master data within (SAP R/3 based) ERP environment (n.b. = Not a typo – this
is either a strength or a weakness depending upon one’s requirements)
• Batch emphasis, e.g. customer data is typically replicated in batch mode among
participating systems; however, enterprises can propagate customer data using the same
common architecture that is used by the product hub for replication/distribution via SAP
NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure or directly via APIs
• Lack of strong SI channel (the number of SIs promoting NetWeaver is a good channel,
however, the subset that are catering to SAP MDM is far smaller)
• Under invested in marketing (if SAP was true believer at the executive level in the
strategic nature of enterprise master data management, then the SAP MDM product
would be much more prevalent in the overall SAP marketing mix)
• Emphasis on product/supplier capabilities rather than customer/employee
Hope this will be helpful.
Reward points if found useful.
Regards
Sravan Velamury