Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management Solutions

Published 13 January 2020 - ID G00382085 - 65 min read

By Analysts Simon Walker, Alan Dayley, Sally Parker, Malcolm Hawker

Initiatives: Data Management Solutions

The MDM market is showing a significant move from high cost and complexity to license
flexibility and implementation agility. Data and analytics leaders can use this Magic Quadrant
to help them navigate through a wide choice of enterprise MDM solutions.

This Magic Quadrant is related to other research:

Critical Capabilities for Master Data Management Solutions

View All Magic Quadrants and Critical Capabilities

Market Definition/Description
MDM Solution Capabilities
A master data management (MDM) solution is one of several options available to organizations to
support the enabling infrastructure requirements of an MDM strategy and program. The mode of
delivery spans both on-premises and cloud-based models. An MDM strategy potentially
encompasses the management of multiple master data domains — such as customer, citizen,
product, “thing,” asset, person or party, and supplier — via one or more hubs as part of the
information infrastructure. This analysis focuses on packaged MDM software solutions that bring
together a range of technologies and capabilities to help sustain the idea of a trusted “golden
record” for master data.

MDM solutions are enterprise software products that:

■ Support the global identification, linking and synchronization of master data across
heterogeneous data sources through reconciliation

■ Create and manage a central, persisted system or index of record for master data

■ Support the four MDM hub implementation styles, as defined by Gartner (see the Completeness
of Vision section, “Offering [Product] Strategy”)

■ Enable generation and delivery of a trusted version of one or more data domains to all
stakeholders, in support of various business initiatives

■ Support ongoing master data stewardship and governance requirements through workflow-
based monitoring and corrective-action techniques

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■ Are agnostic to the business application landscape in which they reside; that is, they do not
assume or depend on the presence of any particular business application(s) to function (aka
“application neutral”)

■ Can be implemented by end-user organizations without having to make use of required

professional services (i.e., not optional); end-user organizations may elect to make use of
optional professional services, either those of the vendor or a third-party service provider

MDM is a technology-enabled business discipline in which business and IT work together to ensure
the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, governance, semantic consistency and accountability of an
enterprise’s official shared master data assets. MDM solutions must offer a range of functional
capabilities encompassed by these products (for full definitions, see the Completeness of Vision
section, “Offering [Product] Strategy”). These capabilities include:

■ Workflow and business process management (BPM)

■ Loading, synchronization, business services and integration

■ Data modeling

■ Information quality and semantics

■ Performance, scalability, availability and security

■ Hierarchy management (including advanced hierarchy management)

■ Data stewardship (policy enforcement) support

■ Data governance (policy setting) support

■ Multiple implementation style support

■ Multiple usage scenario (operational/analytical) support

■ Multiple domain support

■ MDM solution suite offering internal integration

MDM implementations and their requirements vary according to:

■ The instantiation of master data, ranging from maintenance of a physical golden record to a
more virtual, metadata-based indexing structure

■ The use and focus of master data, including use cases for design (information architecture),
construction (building the business), operations (running the business) and analytics (reporting
the business)

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■ Organizations’ governance maturity, culture and structures (ranging from small, centralized
teams to global, distributed organizations)

■ The latency and accessibility of master data — from real-time, synchronous reading and writing
of master data in a transactional scenario between systems and services, to legacy-style batch
interfaces for the transfer of master data in bulk file format

■ The type of approach chosen, ranging from centralized approaches using hubs to widely
distributed systems that leverage real time through bulk/batch processes

■ The complexity of the business environment and therefore of the use cases that MDM
implementations must satisfy — these require appropriate levels of governance, compliance, risk
management and privilege control

■ The options for physical or logical data structures to create a hub or the source of the golden
record

■ Deployment options on-premises, in memory or in the cloud

Revenue and License Count Estimates

As part of the research process for this Magic Quadrant, Gartner received data from MDM software
vendors regarding their revenue in 2018 and their license counts by data domain as of the end of
March 2019. If a vendor declined to supply all or some of this data, or if we possessed information
that contradicted the data provided by a vendor, we formulated revenue and/or license count
estimates for that vendor.

The vendors had an opportunity to review and comment on our figures before publication. The
results of this process are given for each vendor below. This data is estimated in all cases.

Magic Quadrant
Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management Solutions

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Source: Gartner (January 2020)

Vendor Strengths and Cautions

Note: All mentions throughout this section to customer satisfaction scores, survey respondents and
reference customer feedback refer to an end-user survey conducted in July and August 2019 as part
of our research for this Magic Quadrant. Reference customers identified by the vendors scored
various overall, functional, product and vendor customer relationship criteria on a scale of 1 to 5 (1
= extremely dissatisfied, 5 = extremely satisfied). All comparisons of a vendor’s reference customer
feedback to the “average” are to the calculated average score for each criterion across all included
vendors.

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All reported customer counts for vendors are as of March 2019, unless otherwise indicated. For
more details of the survey, please refer to the evidence section.

All product releases are as of March 2019.

Ataccama
 Ataccama is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Its Ataccama ONE MDM v.12.4 product entered
general availability (GA) in May 2018. Gartner estimates the vendor’s total MDM software revenue
at $22.4 million in 2018. Its top-three data domains and estimated license counts for live
customers as of March 2019 were B2C customer (95 licenses), B2B customer (51) and
location/site (39). Ataccama has an estimated 86 customers managing multiple data domains.

Strengths

■ Collaborative and high value: Surveyed reference customers scored Ataccama highly for
customer satisfaction across both relationship and product categories. Clients value the
collaborative approach of the vendor and consider the product value for money with good total
cost of ownership (TCO). The vendor scores highly for responsiveness to requests for new
features and for the provision of a continuous stream of innovation.

■ Ease of use: The user interface in the latest version of Ataccama ONE addresses ease-of-use
feedback from prior versions and specifically targets consistency and ease of use for business
users via a consistent web interface across devices. Usability is increasingly important to
nontechnical business users. Ataccama has understood this and continues to make
investments in this area as a competitive advantage.

Cautions

■ Uneven client and partner enablement: In 2018, Ataccama restructured its partner ecosystem.
Services represent some 10% of its MDM business and while resources are rated highly,
reference customers cited difficulty in sourcing Ataccama-skilled resources in North America.
Given globally 95% of organizations use MDM services, if Ataccama cannot provide resources
directly, then bolstering the partner ecosystem is required. Ataccama added five new partners in
2018, although the number of vendors reporting Ataccama projects in Gartner’s “Market Guide
for MDM External Service Providers” was low. Clients are advised to ensure local services
coverage is available.

■ Product strategy: Ataccama approaches and markets MDM as part of a holistic data
management and stewardship strategy with Ataccama ONE, which comprises modules
including multidomain MDM, data discovery and profiling, metadata management, data
integration hub, data preparation, and others. Clients report that legacy solutions such as Master
Data Center (MDC) and Reference Data Manager (RDM) are not tightly integrated, resulting in
increased maintenance and support times.

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Contentserv
 Contentserv is headquartered in Baar, Switzerland. Contentserv v.19.2 entered GA in July 2019.
Gartner estimates the vendor’s total MDM software revenue at $16.6 million in 2018. Its top-three
data domains and estimated license counts for live customers as of March 2019 were finished
product (350 licenses), supplier (45) and part (43). Contentserv has an estimated 45 customers
managing multiple data domains.

Strengths

■ Product domain expertise: Contentserv’s understanding of B2B and B2C product sell-side
scenarios is evidenced by reference customers addressing those scenarios. The vendor
positions its solution as a product experience platform (PXP) due to the addition of capabilities
for product content, marketing content and content analytics to its MDM core.

■ Solution satisfaction: Contentserv received its best reference survey score for satisfaction with
overall product capabilities, with the majority of reference customers being completely satisfied.
Furthermore, respondents said they were completely satisfied with the ability of the product to
meet the needs of their organization. Contentserv has addressed a prior caution regarding
availability of quality third-party resources (system integrators, service providers, etc.) and
received an above-average survey score in this area.

Cautions

■ Service, deployment and support challenges: Areas for improvement emphasized by reference
survey scores include service and support, incremental technical implementation and
deployment, and after-sales care. For these criteria, Contentserv scored slightly below average
when compared to other vendors evaluated.

■ Product instability: Reference customer survey comments, repeated almost verbatim,

emphasized concerns regarding product stability, bugs and, as a consequence, the need for
frequent updates. Contentserv should invest in maturing both its product and R&D processes to
address these concerns.

EnterWorks
 EnterWorks is headquartered in Sterling, Virginia, U.S. EnterWorks Enable v.10.0 entered GA in
March 2019. Gartner estimates the vendor’s total MDM software revenue at $20 million in 2018. Its
top-three data domains and estimated license counts for live customers as of March 2018 were
finished product (319 licenses), supplier (250) and asset (232). EnterWorks has an estimated 255
customers managing multiple data domains.

Note: On 14 February 2019, EnterWorks was acquired by STG and merged with Winshuttle. This
acquisition is not factored into the analysis.

Strengths

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■ Interenterprise ecosystem: EnterWorks Enable is a multienterprise MDM packaged solution,
offering a shared MDM platform with member-specific business and data models. It natively
allows for metadata synchronization, thus creating the ability for multiple partners to
collaborate in the same solution with the requisite permissions. This provides cooperatives,
member groups and multidivisional organizations with a multitenant B2B2C platform to
compete at scale against larger organizations — a particularly interesting value proposition in
the context of digital ecosystems.

■ High-value proposition: A competitive price point combined with predictable costs through fixed
price statements of work and a “configure versus code” approach make EnterWorks an attractive
proposition for both large enterprises and the often forgotten MDM client outside of large
enterprises. EnterWorks received well-above-average scores from reference customers for pricing
structure, transparency of pricing and TCO.

Cautions

■ Domain exposure: EnterWorks is a very strong contender in industries such as wholesale trade,
discrete manufacturing, retail (consumer products, manufacturing, food) and, more broadly, in
industries concerned with MDM of product data. However, while this provides a base for the
vendor’s Multi-Domain Experience Management (MxM) evolution of MDM, it does limit its
exposure. Growth is planned via expansion into other industries including healthcare, services,
technology and telecommunications.

■ Local presence: While EnterWorks received average scores for services and support, it received
the lowest score of all vendors evaluated in this Magic Quadrant for local presence. Reference
customers highlighted a lack of access to relevant skills and a need for focus on knowledge
transfer. EnterWorks is addressing its presence and skills by expanding into the sales and
support offices of its parent company and by expansion of its MDM-capable partner network.

IBM
 IBM is headquartered in Armonk, New York, U.S. IBM InfoSphere Master Data Management
v.11.6.0.10 entered GA in August 2019. IBM Master Data Management on Cloud entered GA in
August 2018. Gartner estimates the vendor’s total MDM software revenue at $203.9 million in
2018. Its top-three data domains and estimated license counts for live customers as of March
2019 were B2C customer (499 licenses), finished product (294) and supplier (88). IBM has an
estimated 344 customers managing multiple data domains.

Strengths

■ Vertical industries expertise: IBM has established MDM expertise and leadership within banking
and insurance, healthcare (patient, provider, payer) and government verticals. This has been
achieved by creating vertical accelerators developed by IBM and its integration partners, and by

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 leveraging industry solutions such as IBM Watson Health and IBM Watson Financial Crimes
Insight.

■ Product vision and innovation: IBM’s investment and product strategy for MDM has fresh
momentum. “Next Generation IBM Master Data Management” is an innovative multidomain,
cloud-native platform. The vendor aims to reduce time to value for new customers to as little as
two months. Furthermore, the strategy promises integration with other IBM products, including
IBM Cloud Pak for Data and IBM Watson Knowledge Catalog for automated data discovery,
cataloguing and policy enforcement utilizing machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence
(AI).

Cautions
■ Integration and implementation satisfaction: Reference customers scored IBM below the
survey average for integration and deployment. While some reference clients reported to have
implementations go live in as little as four and a half months, the average implementation times
for reference customers exceeded nine months and, in some cases, more than 12 months.

■ Sales, services and support satisfaction: In terms of overall satisfaction with service and
support, reference customers scored IBM well-below average. The vendor also received lower-
than-average scores for its sales process, user onboarding and training, and support and after-
sales care.

Informatica
 Informatica is headquartered in Redwood City, California, U.S. Informatica Multidomain MDM
v.10.3 entered GA in September 2018, Product 360 v.8.1.1 in May 2018, Customer 360 v.10.3 in
September 2018, and Supplier 360 v.10.3 in September 2018. Gartner estimates the vendor’s total
MDM software revenue at $193.7 million in 2018. Its top-three data domains and estimated license
counts for live customers as of March 2019 were B2C customer (1,284 licenses), B2B customer
(914) and finished product (691). Informatica has an estimated 1,008 customers managing
multiple data domains.

Strengths

■ Broad product capabilities and customer support: Informatica’s integrated product capabilities,
together with its professional services, enable customers to address a broad spectrum of
domains, implementation styles and MDM use cases with an integrated platform.

■ Addresses emerging market demands: Informatica has a deep understanding of the MDM
market and an ability to deliver offerings to address new requirements like cloud-native
solutions, customer experience and insights, data governance, and ML-based automation with
its CLAIRE engine.

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Cautions

■ Market average value for money and cost of ownership: Some reference customers indicated
that the Informatica solution requires significant skills and expertise in MDM to achieve what is
then viewed as an average value proposition. This can be a result of the often multifaceted
implementations that this vendor and its external service provider partners deliver.

■ User experience: Business users’ satisfaction with the experience of interacting with an MDM
solution is becoming ever-more important. Verbatim comments from surveyed reference
customers described Informatica’s MDM solutions as nonintuitive. However, it should be noted
that Informatica has invested in improvement of user experience in its latest releases.

Profisee
 Profisee is based in Alpharetta, Georgia, U.S. Its MDM solution, Profisee Platform v.7.1, achieved
GA in February 2019. Gartner estimates the vendor’s total MDM software revenue at $20.3 million
in 2018. Its top-three data domains and estimated license counts for live customers as of March
2019 were B2C customer (86 licenses), B2B organization (67) and finished product (55). Profisee
has an estimated 302 customers managing multiple data domains.

Strengths

■ Market understanding, vision and mind share: Gartner inquiries on Profisee tripled in 2018.
Profisee has identified a gap in the market for companies looking to get started with MDM and
seeking an easy-to-use, cost-effective and rapidly deployed MDM solution at a consumable price
point — a need also reflected in Gartner client inquiries. In support of this vision, Profisee also
offers a pure starter solution — Essentials — that can be later upgraded to an enhanced
enterprise solution via the switch of a license key.

■ Cost and speed of deployment: Customers report an easy-to-understand pricing model, an

economically priced offering and favorable TCO. All this, combined with shorter implementation
time frames, makes for a solid proposition in support of Profisee’s vision to service the
unpenetrated MDM market. Profisee has more implementations taking under three months than
any other vendor in this Magic Quadrant.

Cautions

■ Roadmap and new feature requests: Surveyed reference customers scored Profisee low for
visibility into its future roadmap and MDM solution enhancements. Profisee received lower-than-
average scores for its responsiveness to customer requests for new features. However, it has
recently implemented an “ideas” portal for customers to submit and vote on product
enhancements.

■ Scale the business: To successfully service the broader MDM market requires economies of
scale across sales, delivery and support. Profisee received slightly below-average reference

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 customer scores for the availability of quality third-party resources. Enabling the partner
ecosystem will be critical to scale in a space where even small service providers are focused on
lucrative large enterprise deals, and clients are advised to ensure skilled resources will be
available to assist them.

Reltio
 Reltio is headquartered in Redwood Shores, California, U.S. Reltio Cloud 2019.2 entered GA in July
2019. Gartner estimates the vendor’s total MDM software revenue at $34.8 million in 2018. Its top-
three data domains and estimated license counts for live customers as of March 2019 were B2C
customer (33 licenses), B2B organization (21) and product data (5). Reltio has an estimated 70
customers managing multiple data domains.

Strengths

■ Market momentum and mind share: Building on the momentum of 2017, Reltio again
experienced the highest growth rate of all vendors in this Magic Quadrant in 2018, showing a
strong renewal rate. Gartner inquiries referencing Reltio doubled in 2018. While it is successful in
selling to business roles rather than IT roles, Reltio has an increased focus on using partners to
continue to grow and maintain momentum through economies of scale.

■ Cloud-native benefits: As the transition to cloud continues for many organizations, Reltio
remains the only cloud-native MDM solution that qualified for this Magic Quadrant. Entirely
cloud and subscription based, the vendor controls the update cycle facilitating inclusion of new
features and support across a common code base. Offering SaaS enables Reltio to deliver what
it refers to as “zero impact upgrades” and 99.95% uptime guarantees. Subscription revenue
provides a view of future committed revenue for better financial planning. The Reltio MDM
solution is augmented this year with a private cloud offering in support of location-sensitive
industries.

Cautions

■ Customer support: While Reltio provides a continuous stream of technology innovation in its
MDM solution, its roadmap lacks transparency and its customer support is poor (in terms of
response times, training on new features and visibility into ticket communications). These
factors largely attributed to growing pains in 2018. To address these issues, the vendor is
unifying customer success, professional services and support under one senior vice president,
and introducing a value assurance program and dedicated customer success managers.

■ Customer satisfaction: Reltio received one of the lowest scores for overall satisfaction from
reference customers and the lowest score of all vendors in this Magic Quadrant for services and
support. It received low scores for contract negotiation, value for money, pricing structure and
TCO (possibly attributed to planning for cloud spend).

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Riversand
 Riversand is headquartered in Houston, Texas, U.S. MDMCenter v.7.8.x entered GA in April 2018,
and MDMCenter v.8.0 in April 2019. Gartner estimates the vendor’s total MDM software revenue at
$25.2 million in 2018. Its top-three data domains and estimated license counts for live customers
as of March 2019 were finished product (74 licenses), supplier (18) and part (16). Riversand has an
estimated 43 customers managing multiple data domains.

Strengths

■ All-round consistency: Reference customers scored Riversand consistently well across all
categories, and this has been a strength for the vendor for many years. It scored top of all
vendors evaluated for satisfaction with the product’s value for money, and its TCO. Riversand
positions MDMCenter as both a multidomain MDM platform and a product information
management (PIM) solution.

■ Understanding of target markets: Riversand has a strong understanding of B2B and B2C
product buy-side as well as sell-side scenarios within retail, manufacturing and wholesale
distribution market verticals. This is evidenced by the reference customers provided all being
within these three verticals.

Cautions

■ Solution implementation time: The average implementation time for MDMCenter is 10 months,
but a higher-than-average number of reference customers experienced implementations that
took longer than 12 months. While overall reference customer satisfaction with implementation
remains high, market expectations are moving toward rapid time to value.

■ Challenging upgrade path: Reference customers expressed some concerns related to upgrading
from MDMCenter v.7.x to the new v.8.x platform. Reference customers, in verbatim comments,
stated that to move to v.8.x is not an upgrade, but rather a new implementation as the platform
has been totally rewritten. Some reference customers also commented on the availability and
maturity of solution configuration capabilities.

SAP
 SAP is headquartered in Walldorf, Germany. SAP Master Data Governance (MDG) v.9.x entered GA
in September 2018, and MDG on SAP S/4HANA 1809 in September 2018. Gartner estimates the
vendor’s total MDM software revenue at $301.8 million in 2018. Its top-three data domains and
estimated license counts for live customers as of March 2019 were product (2,042), B2C (521) and
supplier (301). SAP has an estimated 2,570 customers managing multiple data domains.

Strengths

■ Consistent consideration by clients: SAP was second highest of all vendors evaluated by survey
respondents as part of a solution selection process. This placement can be attributed to its

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 strong global brand recognition. SAP has optimized its MDM solution for SAP environments,
making it the best solution choice for SAP customers.

■ Leading market share: SAP has maintained leading market share within the MDM market for six
consecutive years. As a result, the vendor has achieved the largest global installed base of all
vendors evaluated in this Magic Quadrant.

Cautions

■ Reference customer scores: SAP received average and below-average scores at the vendor level
from the reference survey, and below-average scores in aggregate at the solution level.
Specifically, respondents gave SAP the lowest scores of all vendors for overall experience,
satisfaction with the product meeting their organization’s needs, initial technical implementation
and deployment, and TCO.

■ Solution performance: A small number of reference customers highlighted issues with the
performance of MDG. Some described the solution’s slow response times, resulting in user
complaints. However, this could be due to heavily customized solutions. Performance issues
reported related to reference customers on both MDG versions 8.x and 9.x.

Semarchy
 Semarchy is based in San Francisco, California, U.S. Semarchy xDM v.5 achieved GA in March
2019. Gartner estimates the vendor’s total MDM software revenue at $18 million in 2018. Its top-
three data domains and estimated license counts for live customers as of March 2019 were B2B
organization (42), B2C customer (38) and HR data (26). Semarchy has an estimated 60 customers
managing multiple data domains.

Strengths

■ End-to-end relationship management: Reference customers gave Semarchy high scores across
the board for overall satisfaction with the vendor. They praised its proactive collaborative
relationships — from its sales process, through implementation and deployment, to support and
after-sales care. This included high scores for user and onboarding training. Semarchy was also
attributed with easy-to-understand pricing, providing good TCO and value for money.

■ MDM maturity, flexibility and ease of use: In support of Semarchy’s goal to democratize the
360-degree view via dashboards, reference customers highlighted ease of use, configuration and
scalable data modelling as valued features. Its ability to change data models at both design
time and deployment time means it can support rapid implementation of changing business
requirements.

Cautions

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■ Partner mind share and enablement: Semarchy continued to build out its partner ecosystem in
2018 for greater reach and exposure through the addition of large global system integrators
(SIs) and smaller, specialist SIs. But customer feedback on use of third parties was marginally
below average. With over half of all MDM deployments using a third party and MDM vendors
often vying for the same SI mind share, enablement in this area is key to growth and a positive
customer experience.

■ Version-specific limitations: Not all Semarchy reference customers provided were running on
xDM v.5. Pre-v.5 clients highlighted integration limitation and complexity introduced through
lack of availability of a Microsoft SQL Server. However, xDM v.5 does fully support Microsoft
SQL Server and is also available on Microsoft Azure Cloud.

Stibo Systems
 Stibo Systems is a private company headquartered in Aarhus, Denmark. Stibo Systems’ MDM
solution suite v.9.2 entered GA in August 2019. Gartner estimates the vendor’s total MDM software
revenue at $69.3 million in 2018. Its top-three data domains and estimated license counts for live
customers as of March 2019 were finished product (348), supplier (75) and location/site (38).
Stibo Systems has an estimated 116 customers managing multiple data domains.

Strengths

■ Customer satisfaction: Stibo Systems garnered consistently positive customer feedback in line
with its “No customer left behind,” 100% referenceable customer initiative. Its onboarding and
training were particularly well-received. Stibo Systems also received above-average reference
customer satisfaction scores for its integrated platform — reflective of the vendor’s commitment
to reinvest no less than 20% of revenue back into R&D. Its MDM solution is deemed value for
money and increasingly considered in competitive scenarios.

■ Broad coverage: Stibo Systems is one of a handful of vendors with notable (15%) revenue
derived from outside of North America and EMEA. Combined with broad coverage of industries,
domains and implementation styles, the vendor represents a wide array of all MDM critical
capabilities and complexity vectors. It is particularly strong in finished product and,
subsequently, retail, discrete manufacturing and wholesale trade industries, with a clear vision
for augmented hubs.

Cautions

■ Third-party resources: Consistent with a more general trend around access to skilled third-party
resources, Stibo Systems received the second-lowest score of vendors in this Magic Quadrant
for availability and quality of third-party resources. This is all the more notable because the
vendor scored well generally across all areas. Its partner ecosystem includes large global service
integrators and smaller, data-focused providers with a model of subcontracting Stibo Systems’

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 resources to the partner for solution delivery. Stibo Systems launched a partner community in
April 2019 and is taking steps to resolve this shortcoming.

■ Integration via standard APIs: The integrated platform received below-average scores for ease
of integration using standard APIs. This is notable, in that all other features received average or
above-average scores. Clients raised concerns that the complexity of the data model impacted
downstream systems’ consumption of data. Stibo Systems’ commendable augmented hub
vision will require that the ease of integration concerns be mitigated.

TIBCO Software
 TIBCO Software is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, U.S. TIBCO EBX v.5.9 entered GA in June
2019. Gartner estimates the vendor’s total MDM software revenue at $75 million. Its top-three data
domains and estimated license counts for live customers as of March 2019 were finished product
(210 licenses), B2B organization data (135) and B2C customer/citizen (116). TIBCO has an
estimated 185 customers managing multiple data domains.

Note: TIBCO Software announced the acquisition of Orchestra Networks on 4 December 2018 and
rebranded it as TIBCO EBX. This acquisition is factored into the analysis.

Strengths

■ Client satisfaction: TIBCO Software received the second highest score of all vendors in this
Magic Quadrant for overall satisfaction with the vendor, and for services and support. It has
good global and industry coverage, and received high scores across all of the product critical
capabilities.

■ Postacquisition economies of scale: Through the acquisition of Orchestra Networks, TIBCO has
become one of the largest MDM vendors in this Magic Quadrant. With EBX as TIBCO’s flagship
MDM offering, the vendor can boast geographic reach, sales and marketing might, global
support center coverage, and a wide partner ecosystem. In addition, TIBCO reinvests 18% of
revenue back into R&D. Its products (e.g., Spotfire) pull through EBX business; so, too, will new
enterprise licensing agreements inclusive of EBX.

Cautions

■ Client enablement: While a lack of third-party services is a common theme in this year’s Magic
Quadrant, TIBCO received the lowest score of all vendors for availability of third-party resources.
Relatively low scores for user onboarding and training, combined with “coding requirements” in
complex projects, means TIBCO will need to focus on client enablement for EBX to capitalize
fully on the postacquisition opportunity.

■ Reaffirm roadmap: TIBCO scored lower than average for provision of a continuous stream of
innovation and responsiveness to requests for new features. It also received the joint lowest
score for provision of a roadmap for enhancements. While this may be attributed to the timing

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 of the acquisition, transparent communication of both EBX and legacy roadmaps, along with
associated support and transition plans, are required.

Viamedici
 Viamedici is headquartered in Ettlingen, Germany. EPIM 4 entered GA in December 2017. Gartner
estimates the vendor’s total MDM software revenue at $17.6 million in 2018. Its top data domain
and estimated license count for live customers as of March 2018 was finished product (210
licenses). Viamedici has an estimated 210 customers managing multiple data domains.

Strengths

■ Improved customer satisfaction: Reference customer survey results showed overall

improvement compared to last year’s evaluation, with Viamedici achieving average or above-
average scores across most categories. The vendor received its best scores for the product
meeting organizational needs, pricing structure, incremental technical implementation, and
deployment ease of integration.

■ Highly effective professional services: Surveyed reference customers repeatedly stated their
satisfaction with the vendor’s customer service, citing helpfulness and expertise of the CS team.
Reference customers also highlighted implementation being on time and on budget, as well as
problem solving and collaboration with the vendor.

Cautions

■ Limited global reach: The majority of Viamedici’s customers are located in the German-speaking
EMEA region referred to as DACH (Germany, Austria and Switzerland). However, Viamedici has
initiated a strategic expansion into North America and Japan, where it has won new customers.

■ Limitation of the product domain: Viamedici has sell-side product, domain-specific depth. But
its platform capabilities for other domains such as buy-side product or customer domain in
support of B2B use cases remain untested. Prospects should consider their options when
mastering data domains beyond the sell-side product.

Vendors Added and Dropped

We review and adjust our inclusion criteria for Magic Quadrants as markets change. As a result of
these adjustments, the mix of vendors in any Magic Quadrant may change over time. A vendor’s
appearance in a Magic Quadrant one year and not the next does not necessarily indicate that we
have changed our opinion of that vendor. It may be a reflection of a change in the market and,
therefore, changed evaluation criteria, or of a change of focus by that vendor.

Added
None

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Dropped
None

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

In terms of market traction and momentum, to be included in this Magic Quadrant vendors needed
to have:

■ Generated at least $15 million in total software revenue (license and maintenance) relating to
MDM solutions across all master data domains in 2018.

■ Sales and support operations in at least two of the following regions: the Americas, EMEA and
APAC.

■ Sales operations, support operations and customers in multiple industries.

Although not part of the formal inclusion criteria, we also collected and/or estimated additional
data to ascertain the level of activity and stability of each vendor in the market. This included (but
was not limited to):

■ At least 20 “live” (in-production as of the date of submission) reference customers for packaged
enterprise MDM solution functionality (see Note 3). Each vendor was asked to supply details of
20 reference customers that:

■ Represented the broadest and deepest fulfillment of the use cases and critical capabilities
described in this document. We assumed that if a scenario was not represented (including
representation of each MDM solution within the vendor’s MDM portfolio, if there are multiple
MDM solutions), it had not been fulfilled since 1 January 2018. No consideration was given to
reference customer survey data from any prior iteration of this Magic Quadrant.

■ Included at least seven customers willing to participate in a telephone discussion of 30

minutes’ duration. We did not necessarily call all reference customers who were willing to
accept a phone call. We did send an online survey to any reference customers who we did not
call, whether or not they stated that they would accept a phone call. We did not both phone
and conduct the online survey for any reference customer, unless we specifically requested an
exception from a reference customer due to an unusual situation (e.g., other reference
customers failing to attend their scheduled phone calls).

■ Included only customers running one of the latest two release levels of the solution(s).

■ Included only customers who had gone live since 1 January 2018. An exception was if a
customer had upgraded to one of the latest two release levels in the same period, specifically
to gain access to features not implemented prior to those releases — any such customers
were eligible for consideration. Upgrades performed simply to maintain product support were

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 not considered. An additional exception was allowed in cases where multiple domains were
involved. In those cases, the latest domain’s go-live date had to be on or after 1 January 2017.

■ At least 10 new customers for MDM solutions in the four quarters ending in March 2019.

■ Sufficient professional services resources to fulfill customer commitments for the six months
following the submissions for this research.

■ Enough cash to fund a year of operations at the current “burn rate” — that is, if no revenue was
achieved during a full year of normal operations.

Vendors may have multiple products in the MDM solution market. In these cases, each vendor was
evaluated as a whole for this Magic Quadrant and for the subsequent companion “Critical
Capabilities for Master Data Management Solutions” (to be published 1Q20). The products are
described separately in the Critical Capabilities research.

Exclusion Criteria
This Magic Quadrant excludes the following vendors and revenue sources because they are
tangential to the main focus of MDM programs, which is to master data within and across an
organization:

■ Vendors that focus solely on analytical (downstream only) MDM requirements.

■ Vendors that resell another vendor’s MDM solution without extending its functionality. Likewise,
royalties from an OEM arrangement or from resale by another vendor are not credited to the
provider of the OEM technology; software revenue originating from end-user acquisitions is
credited to the reselling vendor.

■ Marketing service providers, data aggregators, data brokers and other data providers that
provide trusted reference data external to the enterprise, but that do not provide a solution that
meets Gartner’s definition of MDM.

■ Application data management (ADM) tools that solely perform data management functions for
use in a specific business application’s data store. We exclude these tools whether or not the
business application is sold by the same vendor as the ADM solution. We exclude these tools
whatever their implementation infrastructure — on-premises, cloud or in-memory. Some MDM
solutions can be configured optionally as ADM tools; we also exclude revenue from these
configurations.

■ MDM solutions that are bound to an application context — whatever the means, whether license,
vendor packaging or technical — do not qualify as packaged enterprise MDM solutions. By
definition, they are not application-neutral.

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■ MDM solutions of whatever description and delivery model that require professional services
(i.e., professional services are mandatory) — whether vendor, partner or otherwise. These are
assessed to be MDM service provider solutions, not packaged enterprise MDM solutions, and
therefore fall under the Gartner definition of IT services (see “Market Definitions and
Methodology: IT Services”). As defined by Gartner, packaged enterprise MDM solutions should
be independently implementable by end-user IT personnel, although external services may be
used as a choice exercised by the end-user organization.

Honorable Mentions
The following service providers were not included in this Magic Quadrant as they did not meet the
inclusion criteria, but each offers a packaged MDM solution that may be of interest. Below is a
nonexhaustive list:

■  Magnitude Software

■  Software AG

■  PiLog

■  Unidata

■  Boomi

■  Syncsort (acquired Pitney Bowes’ software and data business on 2 December 2019)

Evaluation Criteria
Ability to Execute
Gartner analysts evaluate technology vendors on the quality and efficacy of the processes,
systems, methods or procedures that enable them to be competitive, efficient and effective, and to
positively impact revenue, retention and reputation. Gartner evaluates vendors’ and service
providers’ Ability to Execute in the MDM market using the following criteria.

Product or Service: This relates to the packaged enterprise-grade MDM product or fully packaged
cloud-based MDM service offered by the vendor for the MDM solution market. This criterion covers
product capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills and so on, whether offered natively or through OEM
agreements and partnerships. Vendors are measured on the ability of their products to support the
following use cases for MDM solutions:

■ MDM of B2C customer data — The mastering of individual customer data (and other party data
such as citizen or patient) during the process of creating trusted master records that support
business processes centered on individuals, or organizations treated as individuals. These
implementations enable the authoring of institutional customer master data in workflow-, batch-

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 or transaction-oriented processes that conform to one or more MDM implementation styles (or a
hybrid of those styles).

It is common for B2C customer master data to be managed in a consolidation-style

environment, where the entry points of the master data are not directly controllable by the MDM
technology. More-mature MDM of B2C customer and other party data programs may progress to
a more workflow-oriented environment over time, as operational data and systems are
rationalized with the support of MDM.

■ MDM of B2B customer data — The mastering of institutions, which often manifest themselves
as hierarchical data, during the process of creating trusted master records that support business
processes centered on organizations. These implementations enable the authoring of customer
master data in workflow-, batch- or transaction-oriented processes that conform to one or more
MDM implementation styles (or a hybrid of those styles).

It is common for B2B customer master data to be managed in a workflow-oriented environment,

where the entry points of the master data are controllable by the MDM technology.

■ MDM of buy-side product data — The mastering of product or material data (inclusive of IoT
“things”) during the process of creating trusted master records in support of business processes
focused on supply chain management (SCM). These implementations commonly serve as the
point of capture for product data, as received from suppliers and mastered at an enterprise level
in support of SCM and optimization.

Often serving as a system of record in a centralized implementation style, this master product
data is typically managed in a workflow-oriented environment.

■ MDM of sell-side product data — The mastering of product or material data (inclusive of IoT
“things”) during the process of creating trusted master records in support of business processes
focused on the provision of product data to customers. These implementations commonly
handle the enriched product data needed to support customer requirements, including its
publication internally in the organization and syndication externally to customer-facing
channels, e-commerce platforms and websites.

Often serving as a primary system of reference in a centralized implementation style supporting

product systems of record, such as product life cycle management (PLM) or ERP systems, this
master product data is typically managed within a workflow-oriented environment.

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■ Multidomain MDM — The mastering of critical data objects across multiple domains
concurrently in the process of creating trusted master records in support of business processes
dependent on them. A master data domain encompasses related data entities that are of critical
importance to an organization, such that they should be mastered at the enterprise (as opposed
to application) level to provide semantic consistency across the business. These entities will
prove central to how the organization does what it does; the actual observations represented by
master data will be of significant interest to business executives — even if they do not use the
term “master data.”

Several patterns have emerged whereby “customer,” “party,” “product” or “thing” master data
have become the highest priority for a large number of organizations. The MDM solution should
be capable of supporting all domains that are “in scope” for an MDM program, through either
client-driven or prepackaged data model styles, as defined by Gartner (or a combination of the
two). The more common master data domains include:

■ Customer/consumer/patient/citizen

■ Vendor/supplier

■ Channel/partner

■ Product/item

■ Purchased part

■ Asset

■ Location

■ General ledger account

Other data domains have been identified in MDM programs, such as IoT things, and span many
industries.

■ Multivector MDM — The mastering of data across all five vectors of MDM complexity
concurrently in the process of creating trusted master records that support business or mission
requirements. These solutions provide an integrated set of facilities for ensuring the uniformity,
accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency and accountability of an enterprise’s official,
shared master data assets. Multivector MDM solutions contain comprehensive facilities for data
modeling, data quality, data stewardship, data governance, data services and data integration in
workflow and transactional usage scenarios. They also offer high levels of scalability,
availability, manageability and security.

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 These meet the needs of the business across all five vectors of MDM complexity:

■ Industries — for example, product-centric industries, service industries and government

■ MDM data domains — for example, customer, supplier, partner, location, product, item,
material, thing, asset, ledger, account, person and employee

■ MDM usage scenarios — for example, design/construction, operational and analytical

■ Organizational structures — for example, centralized, federated and localized

■ MDM implementation styles — for example, registry, consolidation, coexistence and

centralized

Overall Viability: This includes an assessment of the MDM solution vendor’s financial health — the
financial and practical success of the business unit or organization in generating business results
in the MDM solution market on a global basis. We also assess the likelihood that the organization
or business unit will continue to invest in developing the product, offering the product and
advancing the state of the art within the product portfolio.

Sales Execution/Pricing: We assess a vendor’s capabilities in all MDM-solution-related presales

activities on a global basis, and the structure that supports them. This includes deal management,
pricing and negotiation, presales support, and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel.

Market Responsiveness/Record: We assess a vendor’s ability to respond, change direction, be

flexible and achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customers’
needs evolve and market dynamics change within the MDM solution market. This criterion also
considers the vendor’s history of responsiveness.

Marketing Execution: We consider the clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed
to deliver the vendor’s message on a global basis. This message should seek to influence the MDM
solution market, promote the vendor’s brand and business, increase awareness of its products, and
establish a positive identification with its product, brand and organization in the minds of buyers.
This “mind share” can be driven by a combination of publicity, promotional, thought leadership,
word-of-mouth and sales activities.

Customer Experience: We assess the relationships, products, services and programs that enable
clients to be successful on a global basis with the products evaluated. This includes
implementation and support, and the way in which customers receive technical and account
support. It also includes measures of clients’ success in implementing MDM solutions: reference
customers and TCO.

Operations: We consider the vendor’s ability to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include
the quality of the organizational structure — for example, skills, experiences, programs, systems

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and other vehicles — that enable the organization to operate effectively and efficiently on an
ongoing basis.

Table 1: Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria

Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Product or Service High

Overall Viability Medium

Sales Execution/Pricing High

Market Responsiveness/Record High

Marketing Execution High

Customer Experience High

Operations Low

Source: Gartner (January 2020)

Completeness of Vision
Gartner analysts evaluate providers on their ability to convincingly articulate logical statements
about current and future market direction, innovation, customer needs and competitive forces, as
well as how well they map to Gartner’s position. Ultimately, providers are rated on their
understanding of how market forces can be exploited to create opportunities.

Market Understanding: We consider a vendor’s ability to understand buyers’ needs and to translate
those needs into products and services. Vendors that show the highest degree of vision listen to
and understand buyers’ wants and needs, and can shape or enhance those wants and needs with
their added vision. Vendors should demonstrate a strategic understanding of MDM solution
opportunities (e.g., new application functionality or customer segments) and ongoing vendor
market dynamics (e.g., consolidation trends) on a global basis, and translate that understanding
into product and service offerings. Additionally, we consider a vendor’s understanding of the wider
implications of, and the position of MDM in relation to, other categories of data within an
organization’s multidomain/use-case/implementation-style program. An understanding of the
relationship to enterprise information architecture (EIA) and enterprise information management
(EIM) initiatives is also valuable for customers taking a strategic view.

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Marketing Strategy: We look for a clear, differentiated set of MDM solution messages consistently
communicated throughout the organization and externalized globally through a website,
advertising, customer programs and positioning statements. Intersection with multidomain and
multivector MDM, as well as wider MDM and industry challenges, as expressed by Gartner clients,
is important.

Sales Strategy: We look at a vendor’s strategy for selling an MDM solution using its own, or a
partner’s, global network of direct/indirect sales, marketing, service and communication affiliates.
We assess how effectively these are used to extend the scope and depth of the vendor’s market
reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and customer base.

Offering (Product) Strategy: We consider the vendor’s approach to product development and
delivery, which should emphasize differentiation, functionality, methodology and feature set as
they map to current and future requirements. A vendor’s published “statement of direction” (or
Gartner’s understanding thereof) for the next two solution releases needs to keep pace with, or
surpass, Gartner’s vision for the MDM solution market. Gartner’s main packaged-solution-oriented
criteria focus on the degree to which the following capabilities are being developed to meet both
current and future MDM program strategies and implementation requirements:

■ Workflow/BPM — These solutions do not need to include BPM suite technology, but they do
need to interoperate with third-party BPM suite technology in order for their stewardship
(enforcement) and integration (services) capabilities to be consumed in actual business process
orchestrations. Necessary capabilities include business process modeling, master data flow
modeling and documentation, and analytics for key performance indicators and other
benchmarking efforts in support of master data and MDM.

■ Loading, synchronization, business services and integration — The MDM solution needs to
provide facilities for loading master data in a fast, efficient and accurate manner. There is also a
need for integration middleware, including publish and subscribe mechanisms. These provide a
communication backbone for the bidirectional flow of master data between the central
repository and the spoke systems, be they copies or subsets of the repository, or remote
applications (coexistence-style).

These facilities may be provided directly by the MDM solution vendor or via tight integration
with products from specialist middleware partners. The MDM solution should support, as
necessary, the four MDM implementation styles (defined below), which each use loading,
integration and synchronization in different ways.

■ Data modeling — The applicability of the data model to an organization is a fundamental

requirement; the ability of the MDM solution to effectively and flexibly support an end-user
organization’s master data model requirements is essential. The solution must model the
complex relationships between application sources inside the organization, between its products
and services, as well as with intermediaries and other parties.

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 A bitemporal modeling and processing capability should also be provided or supported in order
to support business-level-effective dating, as well as transaction or visibility dating. This may be
accomplished through either or both of the client-driven or prepackaged data model styles
defined by Gartner in “Optimize MDM Deployments by Choosing the Right MDM Data Model
Style.” The solution must also provide business-consumable metadata management
capabilities to dynamically manage data, business rules, sources, authorship and related data
governed by the MDM program.

■ Data quality and semantics — A good data model is of little value unless it contains accurate,
up-to-date and semantically consistent data about each master data object (any and all data
domains). An MDM solution should:

■ Have strong facilities, in batch and real-time modes, for profiling, cleansing, matching, linking,
identifying and semantically reconciling master data in different data sources, to create and
maintain a golden record.

■ Support configuration of business and data rules for comparing, reconciling and enforcing
semantics across data sources, and for matching and linking data.

■ Manage the merging and unmerging of records, with support for full auditability, survivability
and data lineage.

■ Ensure that business rules and associated metadata relating to data cleansing are sufficiently
transparent to satisfy compliance requirements.

These facilities may be provided directly by the MDM solution vendor or via tight integration
with products from specialist data quality partners.

■ Performance, scalability, high availability and security — If the MDM solution supports
operational and analytical applications, and is tightly integrated with established systems and
new applications, serious demands are likely to be made on its performance, scalability and
availability. The MDM solution should have proof points — from live reference customers — of
different aspects of performance and scalability that match current and future requirements. It
should have appropriate availability characteristics regarding planned and unplanned
downtime.

On the security and data privacy management front, it should possess the ability to manage the
policies and rules associated with potentially complex privacy access rights. It should be able to
configure and manage different rules of visibility to provide different views for different roles.

■ Hierarchy management — The MDM solution should be able to model and store multiple
hierarchies within and across in-scope data domains. This is so it can comprehensively classify

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 all instances of master data for various business requirements, as well as support broad-based
functions such as searching and reporting. This functionality should include support for
multiple linked or stand-alone hierarchies relating to a single domain or combinations of master
data from multiple data domains. A bitemporal modeling capability should also be supported or
provided for hierarchy data.

The solution should also provide support for balanced, unbalanced and recursive hierarchies; a
visualization capability to facilitate maintenance and presentation of hierarchical data; and a
versioning capability to provide an audit trail and recovery capability during hierarchy creation
and maintenance.

■ Data stewardship support — The MDM solution needs to support a range of capabilities, from
information policy evaluation to the day-to-day operation and management of MDM. The
resulting focus of this functionality will support the role of the business-led information steward.
Among the different user roles that interact with MDM, the information steward role requires a
suitable UI through which services are provided. These services include:

■ Analytics and performance measures relating to a range of processes and activities taking
place in support of MDM

■ Status and management tools to enable the information steward to monitor lists of users

■ Systemwide master/meta models to help identify which users, roles, applications and
systems are responsible for which master data, and the state of the master data and/or
business rules that are generating exceptions in that data

■ Services to manage workflows, business rules and audit trails related to these functions

This support should be provided on a range of applicable UIs on PCs, smartphones and tablets
(see “The Role of Technology in Data and Analytics Governance”).

■ Data governance support — The MDM solution should, for the data it is mastering, provide
support for information governance functions such as policy evaluation, creation and
collaboration, as well as policy change management and impact analysis. This support may be
provided directly via prebuilt capabilities, including application logic, workflows and UIs.
Alternatively, it may be indirect, providing a service interface that enables these functions to be
provided and transmitted by software and services external to the MDM solution (e.g., an
information governance or metadata management suite/application). An MDM solution should
be capable of providing or supporting information governance functions such as governance
policy collaboration and creation, as well as policy change management and impact analysis. It
should be capable of reacting to changes made in an internal or external information
governance layer by facilitating updates to current data stewardship functionality.
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■ Multiple implementation style support — The MDM solution should be capable of supporting all
four of the MDM implementation styles recognized by Gartner, as well as hybrids of those styles,
as required. The four implementation styles are:

■ Registry — In this style, the MDM hub is used mainly as a central index to master data that is
authored in a distributed fashion and remains fragmented across source systems of record.
MDM is generally not the authoritative system of record for the master data attributes of the
in-scope domain; that status remains with the operational data sources.

■ Consolidation — In this style, the MDM hub is used primarily to support data warehousing and
other analytics initiatives. MDM is applied downstream of the operational systems. MDM is
generally not the authoritative system of record for the master data attributes of the in-scope
domain; that status remains with the operational data sources.

■ Centralized — In this style, master data is authored, stored and accessed from a central
system, either in a workflow or a transactional use case. MDM is generally the authoritative
system of record for all the master data attributes of the in-scope domain.

■ Coexistence — In this style, master data authoring, storage and access is distributed and a
golden copy of a portion of the master data attributes is maintained and accessed in the
MDM hub. The hub publishes this golden copy to subscribing systems. MDM is generally the
authoritative system of record for only a portion of the master data attributes for the in-scope
domain; the operational data sources retain that status for the remainder of those attributes.

■ Multiple usage scenario (operational/analytical) support — The MDM solution should be able
to support both operational and analytical MDM requirements, and any required integration
between them; that is, both the operational and analytical usage of the data being mastered
within the MDM solution. These two scenarios are:

■ Operational MDM — This scenario describes the operational side of the business, where
business users first create data that is then used in a transactional system (e.g., an ERP, order
management or accounting system). Two subscenarios have emerged that primarily relate to
specific data domains. Many early implementations of MDM of customer data focused on
transactional environment integration (near-real-time messages between data stores and
applications), whereas many early implementations of MDM of product data focused on
workflow or collaborative environments. These are both examples of operational MDM.

■ The requirements for workflow and collaboration now are increasingly beyond product data —
they extend to an increasing roster of data domains that need to be integrated with
transactional systems.

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 ■ Analytical MDM — A lot of technology used in MDM (for example, for ETL, data integration,
data quality, normalization, entity resolution, harmonization and transformation) is also used
when building a data warehouse to support a BI or other analytic initiative. The major
difference is that in a non-HTAP analytic environment, there is no “closed loop.” The result is
no improvement in data quality or consistency in the upstream, business-application-oriented
or operational systems.

■ Analytical MDM still provides a single view by means of high-quality, high-integrity master
data (and much other data). But there is no intent or program to clean up the source data or
the processes in the source systems that create “rogue” data (or that allow it to be created).

■ Multiple and multidomain support — Multiple and multidomain MDM technology is purpose-
built to address the requirements of an MDM program that spans more than a single data
domain from a master data perspective. It has the following characteristics:

■ It can be implemented in a single instance or multiple preintegrated instances.

■ The data model is uniform or interoperable and can manage cross-domain intersections.

■ The workflow and UI elements are uniform or interoperable.

■ It supports at least one usage scenario, implementation style and organization/governance

model for specific industry requirements.

■ Product suite internal integration — The MDM solution should be able to provide both a default
level of integration between in-scope data domains, whether they are persisted together or
separately in terms of data store instance, and then visualize and generate that integration. This
can be achieved via a single product or multiple products within a suite or portfolio, and by
employing the client-driven or prepackaged data model styles (or both), as defined by Gartner, to
support a given set of MDM requirements.

However this is accomplished, the solution should provide support for both different MDM
implementation styles across each single data domain over time and concurrently across
multiple data domains, as well as packaged capabilities to migrate domain implementations
between implementation styles.

Each vendor should offer an MDM solution that can be configured for a range of architectural
styles, in terms of instantiation, latency, search and usage of master data, to enable it to satisfy
different use-case scenarios.

Each vendor should understand major technological and architectural shifts in the market, and
communicate a plan to address them, including migration issues that may affect customers on
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current releases. Specifically, a vendor should have a vision to support mainstream software
infrastructure technology (as opposed to a proprietary stack) or cloud-based solution offering, and
have an evolutionary path toward service-oriented architecture.

Business Model: We consider the soundness and logic of a vendor’s underlying business
proposition. Vendors should have a well-articulated strategy for revenue growth and sustained
profitability. Key elements of strategy include the sales and distribution plan, internal investment
priority and timing, and partner alliances such as with external service providers.

Vertical/Industry Strategy: A vendor’s strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the
specific needs of individual market segments, including industries, is considered in this criterion.
Included are reviews of the vendor’s strategy for meeting the needs of specific industries such as
banking, manufacturing, communications and government.

Innovation: Vendors should be able to lead the market and, in so doing, provide customers with an
innovative solution and approach to meet their needs in a complex, heterogeneous environment.
Innovation implies leading the way with regard to MDM issues, both now and in the future. We look
for understanding of, and support for, the most complex and broad MDM environments, and the
growing requirements of multidomain and multivector MDM in general. We also examine how
vendors plan to support key initiatives such as the cloud, exogenous data (such as social data),
IoT data and mobile communications in the context of MDM.

Geographic Strategy: We assess a vendor’s strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to
meet the specific needs of geographies outside its “home” or native geography, either directly or
through partners, channels and subsidiaries, as appropriate for that geography and market. This
includes sales, marketing and support for complex global companies.

Table 2: Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria

Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Market Understanding High

Marketing Strategy High

Sales Strategy Medium

Offering (Product) Strategy High

Business Model Medium

Vertical/Industry Strategy High

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 Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Innovation High

Geographic Strategy Low

Source: Gartner (January 2020)

Quadrant Descriptions
Leaders
Leaders demonstrate strength in depth across the full range of MDM functions, including core
functions detailed as MDM solution critical capabilities.

Leaders exhibit a clear understanding of dynamic trends in the MDM market; they explore and
execute thought-leading and differentiating ideas; and they deliver solution innovations based on
the market’s demands. They have the strategic vision to address evolving client requirements.

Leaders align their MDM offering strategies with the latest market trends, such as:

■ Business outcome focus

■ Multidomain MDM and multivector MDM

■ Support for ‘“360-degree view of” requirements

■ New solution architectures (such as platform-app, microservices and hybrid cloud)

■ New deployment options (on-premises, cloud)

■ Alternative pricing and licensing models (such as subscription and consumption)

Leaders address all industries, geographies, data domains and use cases. Their solutions support
multidomain and alternative deployment options such as SaaS. They offer excellent support for
business roles and include superior user experience.

Leaders have an established market presence and a multinational presence (either directly or
through a parent company).

Leaders undertake clear, creative and effective marketing, which influences the market, promotes
their brand and increases their mind share.

However, they are not always the best choice. As the market’s requirements have shifted to more
all-encompassing solutions, vendors have not kept pace at a macrolevel, which has resulted in a
significant amount of empty space in the top right of the Leaders’ quadrant.

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Challengers
Challengers have established presence, credibility and viability, along with robust solution(s)
capabilities and solid sales and marketing execution.

Challengers may not have the same breadth of offering as Leaders, and/or in some areas they
may not demonstrate as much thought leadership or innovation. For example, they may focus on
or have demonstrated experience in a limited number of data domains (e.g., customer, product and
location data only).

Challengers may lack capabilities in areas such as multidomain or multivector MDM, master data
governance, and/or stewardship or solution deployment options.

Challengers demonstrate a clear understanding of today’s MDM solution market, but they either
have not demonstrated a clear understanding of its future direction or are not well-positioned to
capitalize on emerging trends. They often have a strong presence in other application areas.

Visionaries
Visionaries are innovators — they display healthy innovation and a strong potential to influence the
direction of the MDM solution market, but are limited in terms of execution or demonstrated track
record. Typically, their products and market presence are not yet complete or established enough to
merit Leader status.

Although Visionaries may deliver good customer experiences, they may lack the scale, market
presence, brand recognition, customer base or resources of Leaders.

Note: MDM visions are taking shape along a diverse set of vectors, and many vendors have not
kept pace in formulating a cohesive view of the direction in which they and the market are heading.
For this reason, there is only a single Visionary in this Magic Quadrant.

Niche Players
Niche Players often specialize in a limited number of industries, geographic areas, market
segments (such as small and midsize businesses) or data domains (such as master customer
data or master product data).

Niche Players either do well in specific segments of the MDM solution market, or have limited
ability to innovate or outperform other vendors. They may be focused on specific functionalities,
domains or industries, or they may have gaps in relation to broader functionality requirements.

Niche Players often have strong offerings for their chosen areas of focus and deliver substantial
value for customers in those areas. However, they typically have limited market share and
presence, limited implementation and support services, or they may not have achieved the scale
necessary to solidify their market positions.

Context
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Review of the reference customer surveys and vendor-supplied content revealed the following
findings that we believe to be relevant to this analysis:

■ Shifting vendor landscape: Market share remains dominated by larger traditional vendors (but
with specialized offerings) that still benefit from the highest levels of consideration in
competitive bids courtesy of the breadth of their brand. However, interest in the more MDM- or
niche-focused vendors is rising and reflected in the 2018 growth rates. In turn, these niche
vendors are becoming more mature in their go-to-market strategies, with the introduction of
customer advisory groups that both foster customer loyalty and enhance product planning.
Customer satisfaction scores for 2018 indicate that there is still progress to be made across
sales, services and support, with only 51% completely satisfied with their vendor.

■ Pricing evolution and transparency: The shift from perpetual to subscription pricing for both on-
premises and cloud offerings continues. Vendors are at various points in the journey. For the
most part, the average selling price increased in 2018, both for perpetual and subscription
licenses. We continue to observe that individual quotes for MDM solutions vary widely due to
the large number of variables that comprise vendor pricing. Gartner recommends close review of
any solution pricing and, for cloud-based subscription pricing, that a longer-term, year-on-year
TCO analysis be developed to avoid surprises.

■ Variable geographic coverage: North America and Western Europe saw 10.1% growth in 2018 to
represent 80% of the MDM market. Both MDM vendor and MDM service provider coverage is
reflective of this, with those in North America increasing their European footprint and vice versa.
The rest of the world trails. China and Eastern Europe saw notable growth but remain small
contributors at this stage, with 3% and 2% of the market respectively. Outside of the established
multinational MDM vendors, those seeking to drive business beyond North America and Europe
most frequently rely on third-party strategies. Gartner recommends that clients with interests
outside of North America and Europe clarify the vendor coverage and capabilities in impacted
regions.

■ Cloud gains momentum: 2018 finally saw the tipping point for cloud adoption, with 57% of
surveyed reference customers using cloud services in 2018 — up from 24% in 2017 and 19% in
2016. The approach to cloud varies by vendor, all of them at different points in their journey to
the cloud, reflected in the associated revenue. MDM is finally following the rest of the software
market with clients being pulled to the cloud. Gartner expects vendors to continue to offer on-
premises solutions for some time, reflected in 32% of reference customers surveyed in 2018
having an on-premises MDM solution.

■ Common product themes: There were two notable trends in product direction across vendors in
2018 through 2019:

■ The introduction/evolution of artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) in entity

resolution and improving data quality. Almost all evaluated vendors claim to have integrated

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 AI/ML into their product offerings, or are announcing plans to do so by means of solution
roadmaps.

■ A focus on usability and enhanced UIs, in particular for the nontechnical business stewards.

■ Customer satisfaction: Only 51% of the 263 reference customers participating in the 2019
survey cited being completely happy with their vendor. Low scores for overall satisfaction with
vendor and contract negotiation impacted both the large, established vendors (SAP and IBM)
and the vendor with the highest growth rate (Reltio) for different reasons. Informatica scored
particularly well, with 95% of its reference customers completely satisfied. Meanwhile, only 53%
of reference customers reported being completely satisfied with the services and support
provided by their respective vendor.

■ Availability of professional services: A major pain point and recurring theme in the 2018
customer feedback was lack of availability of skilled third-party resources. With only 9% of
organizations opting to implement MDM without vendor or third-party professional services, this
remains a primary concern. Our conclusion is that professional services, whether vendor or third
party, are perceived by the market as a necessity. This is material as Gartner estimates that the
cost of implementing an enterprise MDM solution is two to three times the cost of the solution
licensing. The average deployment time across reference customers in 2018 was 8.2 months. Of
course, this will vary based on complexity of the MDM initiatives, ease of use of the tools and
availability of skilled resources. Gartner strongly recommends clarifying with the vendor who will
deliver implementation services.

■ Confusion in the market: Gartner fields many inquiries on resolving data quality and associated
governance issues for data used across business applications (operational data governance) as
well as analytic use cases (analytical governance). Confusion in the market on how to approach
this is a direct result of overlap in features and functionality between different technologies and
approaches. Application data management (ADM), customer data platforms (CDP) and master
data management (MDM), in addition to solution-focused tools for data stewardship and data
quality. These differ in complexity, cost, impact and reward. The confusion is heightened as the
level of interest in customer 360 extends to nontechnologists. MDM, when designed and
implemented effectively, offers the biggest reward, but requires the biggest effort. Gartner
recommends that data and analytics leaders work with stakeholders to ensure the foundations
for success are established. It may help to recognize:

■ MDM is effectively rightsized when the scope of master data involved is the least amount of
data most widely shared across the most important business processes, decisions and
systems/apps.

■ ADM is effectively rightsized when the scope of the application data is tied to a specific
application or integrated suite, and that data is not shared or reused outside of that
application or suite.

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 ■ 360-degree solutions seem most effective when master data, application data and other rich
data — specific to a channel (e.g., customer, product) are aggregated even if that data is
governed and/or mastered in other systems, such as MDM or ADM.

Market Overview
Market Drivers
MDM continues to shift from reluctant to indispensable spend across a broader range of
industries. Digitalization remains the most significant driver for growth in the MDM market. Gartner
inquiries come from both technologist and business stakeholder sources, in particular from supply
chain and marketing, as organizations seek to optimize supply chains and create trusted holistic
views of their customer. Similarly, in government the prevailing driver is the creation of a single
trusted view of the citizen across government departments and enhancing citizen engagement.
Privacy regulations also continue to drive exploration of MDM initiatives.

Market and Vendor Dynamics

The MDM market continues to grow on a year-over-year (YoY) basis. For 2018, Gartner estimates
that the overall growth rate within the MDM market to be at 3.4%, or $1.39 billion — a 2.2
percentage point decline on 2017’s growth rate. We continue to observe previously leading MDM
vendor IBM shedding market share and being picked up by SAP, Informatica and the broader MDM
vendor market, increasing their market share on a YoY basis. The 13 MDM vendors that qualified
for inclusion in this iteration constituted 73% of the estimated MDM market revenue for 2018.

Based on 2018 MDM market share analysis, the Gartner-estimated 2018 revenue of the four largest
vendors commanded over 61% of the market (SAP, IBM, Informatica and Oracle), down from 77% in
2017. This decrease is reflective of the shifting playing field of MDM vendors. Note that Oracle has
been excluded from the Magic Quadrant since 2018, but its estimated 2018 revenue has been
included to provide this YoY comparison. Oracle effectively departed the market to focus on ADM.

The remaining 39% of the market is shared across two further revenue tranches in 2018.

Consistent with prior reporting periods, there remains a substantial gap between the fourth- and
fifth-placed vendors by market share. In 2018, the difference decreased to $83.5 million (between
Oracle and Stibo Systems). TIBCO Software’s acquisition of Orchestra Networks in 2019 has
elevated TIBCO to this tranche, with their 2018 revenue effectively creating another fourth position
challenger and narrowing the gap further to an estimated $77.8 million.

While barriers prevail to enter the top four, IBM continues to experience YoY market share erosion.
SAP and Informatica increased market share in 2018. Stibo and TIBCO both increased market
share.

The third tranche covers “the long tail” of MDM vendors, where Ataccama and Semarchy
experienced double-digit growth in 2018. Reltio experienced the fastest growth of any vendor, with

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68% growth.

Acronym Key and Glossary Terms

ADM application data management

AI artificial intelligence

ASP average selling price

BI business intelligence

BPM business process management

EIM enterprise information management

ETL extraction, transformation and loading

GA general availability

HTAP hybrid transactional and analytic processing

IoT Internet of Things

ML machine learning

PIM product information management

POC proof of concept

TCO total cost of ownership

UI user interface

Evidence
The analysis in this research is based on information from a number of sources, including:

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 Extensive data on functional capabilities, customer base demographics, financial status, pricing
and other quantitative attributes gained via a “request for information” process engaging
vendors in this market.

■ Interactive briefings during which vendors provided Gartner with updates on their strategies,
market positioning, recent key developments and product roadmaps.

■ A web-based survey of reference customers identified by each vendor. This captured data on
usage patterns (e.g., data domains and implementation styles), levels of satisfaction with major
product functionality categories, various nontechnological vendor attributes (such as pricing,
product support and overall service delivery) and more. In total, 263 organizations across all
major regions provided input on their experiences with vendors and tools in this manner.

■ Feedback about tools and vendors captured during conversations with users of Gartner’s client
inquiry service. The number of these inquiries totaled more than 2,000 for the period March 2018
to March 2019, inclusive.

■ 2018 market share and revenue growth estimates developed by Gartner, as of May 2019.

■ Inquiry analysis and inquiry share estimates developed by Gartner, based on the volume of
inquiries received from clients about this market (these estimates are not representative of the
entire market). This data was captured as of the end of December 2018.

■ Results from a survey of vendors’ reference customers.

Note 1
Definition of Master Data Management
Master data management (MDM) is a technology-enabled discipline in which business and IT work
together to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency and accountability
of an enterprise’s official, shared master data assets.

Master data is the consistent and uniform set of identifiers and extended attributes that describe
the core entities of an enterprise, such as existing customers, prospective customers, citizens,
suppliers, sites, hierarchies and the chart of accounts.

Note 2
Definition of Application Data Management
Application data management (ADM) is a technology-enabled business discipline in which
business and IT work together to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, governance,
semantic consistency and accountability for data in an application or suite, such as CRM, ERP or
SCM.

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Application data is the consistent and uniform set of identifiers and extended attributes of the data
maintained and/or used within an application or application suite. Examples of such entities
include customers, suppliers, products, assets, sites and prices.

Note 3
Survey of Reference Customers
As part of the Magic Quadrant research process, we sought the views of vendors’ reference
customers (20 per vendor) via a survey conducted online and via telephone. The survey included
requests for feedback about:

■ Vendor maturity — understanding of industries, provision of innovation, responsiveness to new

requests, TCO and pricing.

■ Product capabilities — flexibility in data modeling, support for data quality, UI support for data
stewardship, internal workflow and support for multiple architectural styles.

In total, 191 organizations, representing all the featured vendors’ reference customer bases, were
contacted for this survey. The reference customers were generally pleased with their vendors and
products, but they gave relatively low marks in some areas, which we have detailed in the analysis
of each vendor. Some of the reported shortcomings may be historical, as not all organizations were
on the latest product versions.

Evaluation Criteria Definitions

Ability to Execute
Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by the vendor for the defined market. This
includes current product/service capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills and so on, whether offered
natively or through OEM agreements/partnerships as defined in the market definition and detailed
in the subcriteria.

Overall Viability: Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization's financial health, the
financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood that the individual business
unit will continue investing in the product, will continue offering the product and will advance the
state of the art within the organization's portfolio of products.

Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor's capabilities in all presales activities and the structure that
supports them. This includes deal management, pricing and negotiation, presales support, and the
overall effectiveness of the sales channel.

Market Responsiveness/Record: Ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and achieve

competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customer needs evolve and market
dynamics change. This criterion also considers the vendor's history of responsiveness.

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Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed to deliver
the organization's message to influence the market, promote the brand and business, increase
awareness of the products, and establish a positive identification with the product/brand and
organization in the minds of buyers. This "mind share" can be driven by a combination of publicity,
promotional initiatives, thought leadership, word of mouth and sales activities.

Customer Experience: Relationships, products and services/programs that enable clients to be

successful with the products evaluated. Specifically, this includes the ways customers receive
technical support or account support. This can also include ancillary tools, customer support
programs (and the quality thereof), availability of user groups, service-level agreements and so on.

Operations: The ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include the
quality of the organizational structure, including skills, experiences, programs, systems and other
vehicles that enable the organization to operate effectively and efficiently on an ongoing basis.

Completeness of Vision
Market Understanding: Ability of the vendor to understand buyers' wants and needs and to
translate those into products and services. Vendors that show the highest degree of vision listen to
and understand buyers' wants and needs, and can shape or enhance those with their added vision.

Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages consistently communicated throughout

the organization and externalized through the website, advertising, customer programs and
positioning statements.

Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling products that uses the appropriate network of direct and
indirect sales, marketing, service, and communication affiliates that extend the scope and depth of
market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the customer base.

Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor's approach to product development and delivery that
emphasizes differentiation, functionality, methodology and feature sets as they map to current and
future requirements.

Business Model: The soundness and logic of the vendor's underlying business proposition.

Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet
the specific needs of individual market segments, including vertical markets.

Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or capital
for investment, consolidation, defensive or pre-emptive purposes.

Geographic Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the
specific needs of geographies outside the "home" or native geography, either directly or through
partners, channels and subsidiaries as appropriate for that geography and market.

Document Revision History

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Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management Solutions - 12 December 2018

Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management Solutions - 30 October 2017

Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management Solutions - 19 January 2017

Recommended by the Authors

How Markets and Vendors Are Evaluated in Gartner Magic Quadrants
Hype Cycle for Data and Analytics Governance and Master Data Management, 2019
The Five Vectors of Complexity That Define Your MDM Strategy
Select the Best Master Data Management Implementation Styles for Your Needs
Think Big, Start Small, Be Prepared — Master Data Management
Market Guide for MDM External Service Providers
Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’: Master Data Management Solutions

Recommended For You

Critical Capabilities for Master Data Management Solutions
Critical Capabilities for Metadata Management Solutions
Critical Capabilities for Data Quality Solutions
Think Big, Start Small, Be Prepared — Master Data Management
Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’: Master Data Management Solutions

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