IBM InfoSphere MDM Reviews

We're using this solution for some pharmaceutical companies. 

The solution is deployed on-prem. Right now, we're using version 11.6

The advantage is that the matching engine is very good, so that's why customers generally prefer it. From the inbuilt data model perspective, IBM MDM is good.

It's a tough tool for developers. Right now in the market, I think Informatica MDM is number one and is used a lot. 

IBM MDM was developed by some other company and IBM developed it more. There are definitely some flaws. The tool is difficult to understand from a customer perspective and for developers. Generally, customers can understand Informatica MDM and its functionality easily. If a developer is facing issues with IBM MDM, then a customer will definitely not understand most of the functionality. That is the main concern.

IBM is introducing some Next-Gen MDM, where they are using a lot of current technologies and machine learning. Most of the problems we may be facing right now are probably solved in that version.

I have been using this solution for nine years.

The stability is good.

From a scalability perspective for on-premise, all customers have some issues. I think Informatica has cloud capabilities and IBM MDM should be similar. In that case, scalability will not be a problem because that is the cloud functionality. You can do vertical scaling or horizontal scaling.

The technical support isn't good.

Initial setup is a little bit difficult. It took 10-15 minutes, but it depends on your infrastructure setup. We did the deployment ourselves.

There are solution architects, developers, and IT specialists using this solution.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10.

Customers are using agile mode for software development. Agile mode allows vendors, customers, and all the stakeholders to be in the same platform and interactive with each other. The client is likely to participate more in the development process because they want to understand each and every functionality from the product perspective. Tools like Reltio or Informatica MDM are easier for customers to understand. The product needs to be more interactive and it should be understandable for a layman also.

When users update their information on one product, the data is sent to a database. My approach was to maintain a master data record, ensuring that each platform loads the latest updated record. Instead of having three separate records, the system keeps one master data record, storing the historical records for reference.

It is not difficult for a person to learn to work with IBM InfoSphere MDM. You need the right mentor, people, and support. I received support mainly from IBM account managers and technical sources assigned to the organization. This support made it easier for me to solve problems.

IBM InfoSphere MDM's UI is complicated. It also needs to improve its on-prem configuration. 

The product was web cloud-based, allowing us to scale based on demand. We employed anticipatory scaling, identifying nodes that required more resources and providing additional CPU, memory, and processing power accordingly.

I contacted them through the ticketing system. There's a ticketing system where I raised issues and received support from IBM.

Positive

Working with Informatica feels a bit easier compared to IBM InfoSphere MDM. The organization initially used the product, and as a master data specialist, I had to adapt to the environment.

The product was a bit easy for me to set up initially. Implementing it, on-premises had some challenges, especially considering the limited experience with the solution in South Africa. The deployment of workloads took a couple of hours, while the configuration and setup extended over a few days.

You need to keep on learning and not limit yourself. I rate the product an eight out of ten. 

Our use cases were working with clients who had MDM. All of them had MDM installed to begin with.  

There are several features that I would consider to be the most valuable:  

• Integration with workflow engines to get information out to the Data Stewardardship UI  
• The Probabilistic Matching Engine  

There are not really many areas of the product that need improvement. They have already moved it to the cloud and that is available at the moment. It is not really an additional feature because that capability is there, I just have not used it myself. I left just before the last company was with was moving to the cloud environment. That would be useful in my opinion if it had been available to me.  

They had just upgraded the UI for it in a previous release, which was a major improvement. Three or four years ago, I would have instantly said the Stewardship UI needed an update if asked for an area that needed improvement and it would absolutely have been my first thought. But that has been done recently and they did a nice job of it.  

They have good interfacing with other databases within the suite, and that is a fine feature. Because of the complete integration of the InfoSphere suite, the integration with the ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) and the other parts of InfoSphere work really well together.  

I really do not think there is anything else I need. It does what it needs to do for the MDM market and its users.  

I have been using IBM InfoSphere for 20 years.  

The stability is fine. It is built for large scale industrial usage, so really it has to be stable. It worked without a problem at Lloyds bank where we were dealing with 300 million transactions a day. There were never any issues, so I do not see stability as being a problem.  

There are no issues with scalability. So long as the company using the product puts it on the right sized platform as recommended, scalability will not be a problem.  

The technical support also varied a bit depending on which employer I was with. Some of it was direct with IBM and some of it was with the third-party suppliers. But really the only difference was who it was with and not the quality of the service. All of it was pretty good as far as I was concerned. All the interactions I had with them were fine.  

Actually I am no longer using MDM (Master Data Management) because of a recent job change, but I had plenty of experience with it at my previous employment. So I switched from the solution, rather than to it, due to a job change and currently use what they already have licensed. It had nothing to do with the quality of the product or its use.  

I would not say that the setup is straightforward. So long as you have got IBM support it will be fine, but it is a complex tool and therefore it requires a relatively complex setup. Overall it is slightly more complex than an average data management solution. But that is because of the vast capabilities of the toolset.  

The implementation varied across the three companies that I worked with, but each time we used either IBM or one of their partners to help with the implementation. There was really little room for error that way and it made sure everything was done right in the end.  

While it may be costly for small and mid-sized organizations it is valuable to large organizations with demanding workflows.  

The advice I might give to someone looking into this as a data management solution is that if you are the right size organization, use it. If you have got large volumes of data, need high IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second), and have the money to invest in it as a solution, then it is definitely the right tool. If you are a small company, it is more likely overkill. That is not meant to say that it is expensive for what it is, but it is a costly tool. If you have got the right scale of operation, it will play out as value for money. If you are a small scale operation trying to use it, it may not be valuable for your level of usage.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate InfoSphere MDM overall as a product at an eight-out-of-ten. It is not closer to a ten because it really is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It is clearly for larger-scale organizations, so it is not a general fit for all users.  

The quality of data is a strategic initiative. The solution plays a role in providing capabilities to monitor quality and get proper metadata, etc.

The features that are most valuable are the governance, the end-profiling, and the ETL which allows you to see the metadata repositories.

The master data, and the reference data management in the toolset are not good. The solution isn't giving us what we want, so we are considering building something internally ourselves. If IBM can improve the way that they did data reference management and master data management then I'd say we'd consider staying with the solution.

We also want better cloud integration, so we could do things in the cloud if we needed to. This would be a good feature to add in a future release.

The technical support for the solution was good.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We used an integrator for the integrator. 

Currently, we are focused on the on-premises version of the solution.

I would rate the solution seven out of ten.

Customer data matching is a valuable feature.

MDM helps to solve regulatory requirements with regards to anti-money laundering, which is a must for a financial company.

It needs a better database.

I've used it for seven years.

No serious challenges, they can be overcome,

I'm satisfied, 8/10.

No previous solution was used.

It’s not straightforward. It requires time to fully understand how the internal product works.

In-house, but with help from a hired contractor who was recommended by the vendor.

It’s not a cheap product to acquire and to operate.

For the company I work for, not having MDM is not an option. My company chose a number of record licenses schemes.

No other options were looked at.

Do not rush, plan it properly, and ensure you have enough time to correct any mistakes. It's not a perfect product, but the vendor we chose is reliable and dependable.

MDM is quite a niche market, the vendor also doesn’t have a skilled team, and they have to assemble multiple skills (database, data management, WebSphere, hardware, etc.) to install it.

The ability to standardize and match names using a combination of global name recognition and an MDM server is a valuable feature for us.

We are able to streamline processes, identify fraudulent requests, and provide additional services.

At the time global name recognition was purely batch-oriented, as it needed to become transactional/real time. The stack architecture seems too complicated as a result of having too many components that needed to be built together.

I've used it for several years.

It was OK.

Scalability was sometimes a problems depending on the pre-selection criteria.

Support was OK; it did show however that IBM is not a single organization. There was a need to bridge the towers across the different components within the solution. My recommendation is to get a customer representative who works on bridging the differences within IBM’s organization.

No previous solutions were used.

We were the SI team implementing for a client.

IBM supported aspects of the implementation.

No other options were evaluated.

Make sure to understand how MDM fits into the overall application landscape. Also, cross check the use of MDM against existing processes.

From a business perspective, probabilistic search is the most valuable feature.

The Evergreen Console UI and suspected duplicate processing are the most beneficial features for the customer.

My customer has been able to get a gold copy of its customer database using MDM. This is most beneficial for businesses when they have multiple source system feeds. It also helps merge databases post merger/acquisitions.

Though probabilistic search is supported, this feature is not an out of the box API. We need to code and customize product to retrieve the results. Thanks to the IBM team, this was fixed in v11.4.

I have been using it since 2010.

Turn around time for PMRs raised with IBM for support is pretty low. Highly appreciated for the prompt support.

I don't have working knowledge in any other MDM solutions, however, from what I have read on comparison with others, IBM MDM leads.

deployment is pretty straight forward. Its easy for a developer having basic knowledge of Java/J2EE and Unix.

I have deployed it twice by myself, with no help from a vendor.

The pricing depends on the number of parties to be maintained. I believe it's okay from a selling perspective.

It is one of the best MDM solutions available on market. It is a good solution and there is pretty good product support from IBM, so I strongly recommend it.

• Flexibility
• Web services

It's not shown any improvements yet.

• Documentation
• GUI
• Training

I've used it for three months.

There were some issues.

No issues encountered.

There were some issues.

It's poor.

It's poor.

It's complex because of the poor quality of the documentation. There are many options, and you need to plan it VERY carefully, as it doesn't play well with other systems.

We used an IBM partner, who were still learning the system.

Be patient with them.

No other options were evaluated.

1. Read
2. Try
3. Ask
4. Repeat