TDWI's Technology Poster about Master Data Management

The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) published Technology Poster about Master Data Management, designed by Philip Russom, senior manager of TDWI Research. According TDWI: the Master Data Management poster sorts out the complex layers of the MDM stack, illustrating how people, practices, and software automation are coordinated in a mature MDM implementation.

This poster will help explain:
- The tools, technologies, and techniques that go into the MDM technology stack.
- How the tech stack adjusts to practices like operational MDM and analytic MDM.
- How the MDM technology stack is influenced by pre-existing systems, architectural approaches, growth over time, and build-versus-buy decisions.

This kind of poster is very interesting, because it can be used to explain how MDM works in two ways, first as an overview and after detailing each layer of the process.


Philip Russom tells what he imagined to create the poster:
"On a break during the TDWI World Conference in Chicago this May, I left the hotel and walked up the street to the Museum of Contemporary Art. As soon as I entered, I saw mobiles by the great American sculptor Alexander Calder. My head was spinning from the technical presentations I’d seen at the conference, and it struck me that Calder mobiles resemble the way we draw technology stacks and system architectures. Both are compartmentalized, yet the parts are connected and interactive. Both move and evolve slowly as the winds of change brush them.

Later, when I needed a metaphor for the many pieces that master data management connects and coordinates, I naturally thought of Calder’s elegant and organic mobiles.

As you look at the poster, try to imagine the pieces in motion like a Calder mobile, with the operational, analytic, and enterprise practices spinning, and the balance shifting from collaboration to implementation and back again.

My thanks to Deirdre Hoffman for translating my ideas into the graphic images of this poster."

You can request a free print copy (US and Canada Only) or download a PDF version, in the TDWI website (registration required).

The following companies are sponsors of this technology poster: Baseline Consulting, BizGui Inc, EasyAsk, Exeros, MicroStrategy, Syncsort, Talend.