Share your experience using IBM InfoSphere MDM

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. 

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.