Apparently Oracle decided that it was time to add to their (previously non-existent) capabilities in customer data quality by buying up Datanomic for an as yet undisclosed sum. Credit the folks at 451 Group who pointed out over a year ago after the Silver Creek (product data quality) purchase by Oracle that Datanomic seemed the logical next choice (subscription required). Even my rather small poll of readers back in March 2010 “MDM M&A Candidates – Who’s Who of Who’s Left”had Datanomic 3rd most popular on the board.
With my tongue in cheek blog title, you might think that I’m being a little unimpressed with Oracle’s MDM strategy, but if you read my post last year “Oracle Acquires Silver Creek Systems, Does The MDM World Care?”you probably see I’m being consistent in my views. That being said, any move from the company the size of Oracle draws attention (by the way congratulations to the Datanomics team for being acquired – 451 Group speculates that the price tag was north of the $40M approx. that was paid for Silver Creek due to Datanomics’ revenues and the possibility of other interested bidders).
In my opinion when Informatica acquired Siperian (disclosure my previous company) and IBM acquired Initiate, they cornered the MDM market. The Siperian product has seen tremendous success under the stewardship of Informatica, and with their sales reach has moved Informatica into a leadership position as judged by the Gartner 2010 MDM Magic Quadrant (MQ) (BTW a shoutout to the nice work done here by my former Siperian colleague Ravi Shankar, now at Informatica). Siperian’s MDM technology, clearly ahead of the pack prior to the Informatica acquisition was judged to be “most visionary” in the 2010 MQ.
Below are the 2009 (image linked from authorized reprint link courtesy of Oracle) and 2010 (image linked from authorized reprint link courtesy of Informatica) MQs for comparison. Curiously I could not find a reprint link for the 2010 MDM quadrant link on the Oracle website, while the 2009 one was still active. Apathy or a reflection of their MDM marketing efforts?
But back to the Datanomics acquisition, clearly someone at Oracle has finally decided that relying on 3rd party data quality tools as a critical part of the overall integrated MDM hub was a bad idea. It remains to be seen how they leverage their acquisition in combination with what they have with Silver Creek. Or perhaps they’ll leave it completely separate, just like the two MDM hubs they offer, Oracle CDH and Oracle (Siebel UCM). When will Oracle be a legitimate MDM leader in my eyes? Perhaps when Gartner stops having to put (Siebel UCM) in parenthesis. After all you don’t see Informatic (Siperian) in the 2010 MQ do you? 🙂
P.S. On a completely separate note, congratulations to Jill Dyche and Evan Levy of Baseline Consulting for being acquired by SAS/Dataflux. Both Jill and Evan have flown the flag for CDI and now MDM for many years and their expertise, efforts and panache have finally been rewarded. I wish them the best of luck in their new roles and applaud SAS/Dataflux for their smart move.
Updated Graphic MDM Offerings – A History of Acqusitions & Relationships (previous graphic pre-Oracle buy of Datanomic can be found here)
