How To Manage Big Data

As the discussion around big data gains momentum and substance, questions are being raised about how master data management (MDM) fits into the picture. From what I've seen, the amalgam of master data management with big data is a lot like the Sherlock Holmes story about the dog that didn't bark--what's noteworthy is that there's nothing of note.

I heard (or rather, didn't hear) something similar at the recent MDM and Data Governance Summit in San Francisco, where I presented as well as was part of a panel on master data management and data governance. The message in a nutshell, is that there's definitely a use case for integrating master data management with big data, but there hasn't been much distance covered yet.

The value proposition for bringing master data management into big data analytics is essentially no different from the standard MDM use case: providing identity (i.e. uniqueness) to entities.

Take the product marketing team that's interested in collecting and collating comments made by consumers across the Internet, in discussion forums, personal blogs and other hard-to-decipher places. The data it collects follows a typical big data pattern: