"One of the main features I have found useful is the integration with Azure active directory."
"It has a very good feature called Excel plug-in. You just have to install the plug-in, and then it directly connects to the MDS instance where you can maintain and manage your data and publish it right through Excel. You don't need to go to the front end to make any changes. It has easy integration with SQL Server, and you can use SSIS to do the ETLs. It is a part of the Microsoft stack. It works with most of the Microsoft stuff."
"It's very easy to use."
"Enables non-technical people to directly interact with the BI system."
"We really like the matching and merging features."
"The product is able to utilize the SQL server toolkit and it has tight integration with the SQL server."
"It would be a better option to have an on-cloud version."
"I do not like using Silverlight and Internet Explorer. The new 2019 version gets rid of that, which is one of the reasons why we are looking to switch."
"There are occasions when the solution maintains SD and we get duplications of MDS."
"The only drawback is that it does not have the matching, merging, and all true MDM components. For these, you have to use another competent called Data Quality Services (DQS). You need to plug it in and use it along with MDS for true MDM. Both of these are integrated together, but you have to do them separately, whereas, in Profisee, there are a couple of screens where you can configure the matching process, create matching rules, and other things, and everything is in one product, which is not the case with MDS. In order to implement a true MDM, you need MDS, DQS, and SSIS. You have to use MDS to store your golden records, DQS to configure and standardize all your rules and matching percentages, and SSIS to load the data to DQS and MDS. At the same time, you also need Melissa Data to clean up your addresses to validate and standardize the addresses. That's the main component of true MDM. It would be good if they can create a true matching component inside MDS and merge MDS and DQS."
"The way training is laid out in their Profisee University, makes it really, really hard to find what you need fast."
"When we updated to version 7.1, there were some workflow issues."
Microsoft MDS is ranked 2nd in Master Data Management (MDM) Software with 5 reviews while Profisee is ranked 4th in Cloud Master Data Management (MDM) Solutions with 2 reviews. Microsoft MDS is rated 7.6, while Profisee is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Microsoft MDS writes "MDS 2016 - Primitive but the price is right". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Profisee writes "Great ability to support workflows, excellent out-of-the-box usability, and very good documentation". Microsoft MDS is most compared with Informatica MDM, SAP Master Data Governance, TIBCO EBX, Boomi AtomSphere Master Data Hub and IBM InfoSphere MDM, whereas Profisee is most compared with Informatica MDM, Semarchy xDM, Reltio Cloud, SAP Master Data Governance and Stibo STEP MDM. See our Microsoft MDS vs. Profisee report.
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Hi @Richard Tibbetts,
There's no short answer to your question. Nearly all existing MDM solutions on the market offer a broad range of patterns to ingest master data from various sources and distribute cleanse and consolidated information, also to the Azure stack. Many vendors offer prebuilt connectors for the most common sources (databases, various file types, storages, business applications including MS Dynamics, Salesforce, etc.), but also support a generic way of ingesting/exposing data via Rest APIs, file drops, etc.
MS MDS is an extension of the MS SQL server 2016. I don't know Microsoft plans to extend it, but I know that Profisee and CluedIn are very active in promoting their solutions as-built having Azure in mind and being a part of the stack.
Informatica MDM has three types of offerings these days: on-prem, hosted MDM, and cloud-native option - they differ in the functionality and integration options.
Obviously, there are many more MDM tools on the market particularly good in various data domains (products, customers/suppliers - so yours, multi-domain, etc).
I think that you should start your MDM journey by answering which current challenges you try to solve or what new capabilities you need to enable to the organisation. Once these questions are answered and based on your organization's Enterprise Architecture principles, look for the best fitting tool. It may (or may not) be the one that fits the best into the Azure Reference Architecture.
I hope this helped.
It's probably worth to add the Microsoft promotes using CluedIn as MDM solution on Azure stack. Please have a look at the Microsoft documentation:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...
Last week Microsoft and CluedIn had a joined demo seesion. Perhaps you can ask for a link to a recording: https://www.linkedin.com/posts...
I agree with @InitZero...
I would add that there's no future roadmap for MDS and they don't have an Azure solution for it. Since it's a free product with an SQL license, don't expect Microsoft to invest in it.
Even though we are highly dependent upon it currently I'm starting to look towards the future where we need to find a replacement - hopefully, a PaaS solution. It would be great if Microsoft came out with something in Azure but I'm not hopeful at this point.