Today IBM announced the acquisition of Exeros assets.
From an MDM landscape, what does this mean? Well as hard as Exeros tried to position themselves as being involved in MDM, with sponsorship (founding) of initiatives like the MDM University (now MDM-DQ University), the truth is that it was always a challenge for them to be part of the mix when MDM offerings were being considered.
Exeros offered two main products: 1) Discovery provided a full range of data analysis/profiling capabilities 2) Validator which audited the quality across of data source based on business rules. Both were inherently useful in the context of MDM but while companies such as Siperian, Initiate Systems and others focused on the main MDM platform, products such as Exeros were not considered an essential part of the MDM equation. The complementary 3rd party software that complemented the core MDM platform, which did get included in deals, were tools such as Informatica, Talend to load an MDM Hub in batch or real-time, data quality tools such as AddressDoctor, Trillium and others to cleanse addresses, and even EII technology such as RedHat Metamatrix (OEMed by Siperian for their Activity Manager module) and Composite Software for accessing related transactions outside of the hub. Unfortunately for Exeros, data profiling was never on the must have list and was never pushed as essential to the prospects looking at the major MDM Hubs.
From an execution perspective, they had a decent list of partners (as indicated on their website). When they signed an OEM deal with Siperian , (my former company and the leading MDM platform :-)), that certainly would have began to help. However, it was very much likely that the deal would have little bearing anyhow, given the timing of the IBM acquisition of assets a little over 3 months later. Certainly Exeros’ lack of success wasn’t due to the inadequacy of their technology, IBM certainly saw value. And marketing wise, Todd Goldman (VP Marketing at Exeros) did a marvelous job with MDM University and kept Exeros visible and prominent in all major MDM outlets and publications.
Ultimately why Exeros was not successful remains insider knowledge to which I am certainly not privy, I can only offer my observations from my interaction with prospects who were looking at MDM platforms. It may be that they were too early to the game and that later on down the line, IBM will have garnered a significant suite of products that will add value to MDM efforts. Being associated with MDM could certainly have been the right play, unfortunately for Exeros at this stage of the evolution of the MDM marketplace, they weren’t considered critical enough to survive.
In any event, I tip my cap to them for their efforts and bid them farewell, as they join a long roster of companies that had good technology and good marketing but were unable to generate enough sales to survive. I wish all of the Exeros employees and management all the best in their future endeavors.
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Love the blog Ramon – IBM is continuing to amass technology prowess in the MDM space yet it’s interesting that some of their own consultants have chosen to embrace the Siperian platform for their managed service offering.
On a side note, I was disappointed to hear that you’ve left Siperian. I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors and congratulate you on a very successful career at the company.
Jesse
Hi Jesse. Thanks so much for the post and nice words about my blog. I will miss everyone at Siperian, especially the customers and partners who are so enthusiastic about the product. It’s great to be able to keep in touch with you.