IBM, SAP Keep Data Management Front And Center

Data management is heating up, as word from IBM and SAP made clear this month.

Week before last, SAP showcased its latest integration and application platform, NetWeaver 2004, at the CeBIT show in Hanover, Germany. Among its many components, NetWeaver includes the technology giant's newest master data hub, called Master Data Management. As detailed here, the hub is designed to gather pieces of information from various sources, reconcile and synchronize them, and neatly put them in the same format.

Earlier this month, we also brought you news of IBM's acquisition of Trigo Technologies, a firm whose applications will compete directly with SAP's Master Data Hub. IBM has set an advanced timetable for making Trigo's capabilities available as an IBM platform.

Then just last Thursday we brought you a Q&A with Karen Parrish, IBM's VP of business intelligence solutions, who told Business Intelligence Pipeline this week that IBM sees big demand ahead for information management. Moreover, she said, growing convergence of both warehoused and unstructured data will raise the call for deep analytics.

It seems IBM and SAP are thinking similarly these days. Data management has indeed begun to heat up.