While Master Data Management has crossed the proverbial chasm and is on its way to becoming mainstream, businesses are being hammered by a new megatrend called Big Data. Big Data is characterized by massive volumes, its high frequency, the variety of less structured data sources such as email, sensors, smart meters, social networks, and Weblogs, and the need to analyze vast amounts of data to determine value to improve upon management decisions.

Businesses that have embraced MDM to get a single, enriched and unified view of Master data by resolving semantic discrepancies and augmenting the explicit master data information from within the enterprise with implicit data from outside the enterprise like social profiles will have a leg up in embracing Big Data solutions. This is especially true for large and medium-sized businesses in industries like Retail, Communications, Financial Services, etc that would find it very challenging to get comprehensive analytical coverage and derive long-term success without resolving the limitations of the heterogeneous topology that leads to disparate, fragmented and incomplete master data.

For analytical success from Big Data or in other words ROI from Big Data Investments, businesses need to acquire, organize and analyze the deluge of data to make better decisions. There will need to be a coexistence of structured and unstructured data and to maintain a tight link between the two to extract maximum insights. MDM is the catalyst that helps maintain that tight linkage by providing an understanding about the identity, characteristics of Persons, Companies, Products, Suppliers, etc. associated with the Big Data and thereby help accelerate ROI.

In my next post I will discuss about patterns for co-existing Big Data Solutions and MDM.

Feel free to provide comments and thoughts on above as well as Integration or Architectural patterns.