WAVE REPORT

The Forrester Wave™: Master Data

Management, Q2 2023
The 15 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up
June 19, 2023

JC Jayesh Chaurasia

with Sudha Maheshwari, Faith Born, Jen Barton

Summary

In our 24-criterion evaluation of master data management (MDM) providers, we identified the most
significant ones and researched, analyzed, and scored them. This report shows how each provider
measures up and helps data and analytics professionals select the right one for their needs.

Data Fabric Is Incomplete Without Master Data

Management
The data and analytics landscape has evolved significantly with the proliferation and acceleration of
intelligent technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence. This evolution has
profoundly impacted master data management (MDM) to incorporate automated data quality,
governance, compliance, and no-code/low-code configuration to meet changing customer needs.
Forrester sees providers natively integrating and enhancing complementary capabilities such as
product information management (PIM), digital asset management (DAM), data classification, and
profiling. These capabilities provide a seamless experience for customers and validate MDM’s
critical role in the data fabric architecture. Modern MDMs serve as a hub for consolidating trusted
data, integrating data through a graph engine, delivering real-time streaming for data quality
management, and providing prebuilt multidomain capabilities to integrate data about customers,
products, suppliers, employees, locations, and assets. It bridges the gap in data fabric architecture
by offering a connected, governed, secure, and compliant data center. While traditional MDMs were
by offering a connected, governed, secure, and compliant data center. While traditional MDMs were
used as technical solutions to manage enterprise data across multiple applications, modern MDMs
have advanced to incorporate data enrichment, data context, machine learning, real-time data
processing, and analytics.

As a result of these trends, those looking to procure MDM solutions should look for providers that:

Support compliance and data security through robust federated governance.

Forrester witnesses a strong trend for MDM initiatives in highly regulated industries such as
healthcare, consumer packaged goods (CPG), banking, and finance as governments create
stricter data and compliance controls. Parallelly, data security is climbing the list of priorities as
data breaches are increasing. A mastered single view of enterprise data not only helps with
security controls but also allows better identification and management of compliance issues.
Natively integrated data governance capabilities along with quality management, retention
policies, and privacy and access controls complement and simplify security and compliance.
Distributed enablement of these capabilities supports federated governance to implement
data fabric and data mesh architectures.

Deliver real-time data streaming and processing. Customer preferences and their
interactions with products and services are collected from multiple channels continuously. The
variety, velocity, and volume of data is increasing every day, making real-time data streaming,
processing, and analysis a must-have capability to achieve complete and accurate views of
data. An MDM solution must be able to not only ingest this data but also process it in real time
through flexible and scalable infrastructure. Modern MDMs are able to synchronize changes in
master data instantly using event-driven data streaming.

Provide data intelligence on a unified solution. Customers recognize the value of

consolidated data provided by MDM and expect more than just data management. They seek
a holistic unified MDM solution equipped with data intelligence capabilities like management
of data policies, business procedures, consent, metadata, roles, and stewardship related to
collection, storage, analysis, and utilization of data to enhance products and services. Data
intelligence enables customers to leverage data as a strategic asset, reduce operational costs,
and generate insights that drive better decisions.

Expand the use of MDMs with innovative technologies and new use cases. MDM
solutions need to be adaptable to changing business needs such as the increasing complexity
of IT systems and ever-expanding data volumes. Solutions must leverage emerging
technologies such as AI, ML, and blockchain to deliver automated and augmented data
management and analytics. Providers should strive to expedite time to value for customers
through industry accelerators, cloud-native modular deployment, built-in data intelligence
capabilities, and top-notch AI/ML automations for matching, dynamic merging, stewardship,
and integration. Solution providers constantly deliver new use cases for MDM like
environmental, social, and governance (ESG); supply chain optimization; and fraud detection.
MDM should help enable self-service, innovate to create new data products, and generate
real-time insights.
Evaluation Summary
The Forrester Wave™ evaluation highlights Leaders, Strong Performers, Contenders, and
Challengers. It’s an assessment of the top vendors in the market; it doesn’t represent the entire
vendor landscape. You’ll find more information about this market in The Master Data Management
Landscape, Q1 2023.

We intend this evaluation to be a starting point only and encourage clients to view product
evaluations and adapt criteria weightings using the Excel-based vendor comparison tool (see
Figures 1 and 2). Click the link at the beginning of this report on Forrester.com to download the tool.

Figure 1

Forrester Wave™: Master Data Management, Q2 2023

Figure 2

Forrester Wave™: Master Data Management Scorecard, Q2 2023

Vendor Offerings
Forrester evaluated the offerings listed below (see Figure 3).

Figure 3

Evaluated Vendors And Product Information

 Vendor Profiles
The Forrester Wave™: Master Data Management, Q2
2023

Our analysis uncovered the following strengths and weaknesses of individual vendors.
Topics

Leaders
Vendor Profiles

Informatica’s AI-assisted MDM provides faster time to value and deployment. Data
management is Informatica’s bread and butter. Its MDM is a part of Intelligent Data
Management Cloud (IDMC) delivered to on-premises, public clouds, and multicloud
environments. Informatica’s superior vision focuses on enhancing the understanding and
acceptance of MDM in digital transformations and connecting it with business processes to
avoid data brawls. It innovates in AI through CLAIRE, its AI engine which speeds up the
mastering process along with integration and data governance. Informatica’s focus on AI will
pay off in the long term, but it could be perceived as costly for certain scenarios, leading to
lags in user adoption. Its prebuilt industry accelerators across industries like insurance,
finance, life sciences, and healthcare (where Forrester sees MDM initiatives gaining pace)
further augments time to value.
 further augments time to value.

Improvements in AI have strengthened Informatica’s MDM capabilities related to automated

merging, trustworthiness for survivorship, data governance, data quality rule recommendation,
customer 360, and extraction of data context. Informatica also enables integration through
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metadata-driven ML. However, it’s on par with competition in providing reference data sources
for enrichment, compliance, fine-grained access control, and auditing capabilities. Customers
appreciate the multicloud deployment, ease of use, and customer service while looking for
flexibility in the pricing model. Informatica is particularly suitable for customers looking for
quick time to value and ease of configuration for both standard and advanced MDM
deployments.

Reltio’s real-time AI-driven MDM delivers exceptional data quality and customer
360. Reltio’s Connected Data Platform is a cloud-native solution offered on public and
multicloud environments. Reltio’s vision is to strategically go to market in B2B, B2C, insurance,
financial services, healthcare, and life sciences with prebuilt components in corresponding
velocity packs. Its impressive strategy is to be the one-stop shop for trusted and reliable
master data by integrating data intelligence natively. It innovates by using an API-first
approach to deliver master “data-as-product” and is leading the industry with prebuilt
integrations to cloud data warehouse offerings and real-time APIs. Its roadmap reflects these
innovations. Reltio will benefit if it expands its technology partner ecosystem and educates
users on how to leverage usage dashboards for pricing transparency.

Reltio’s strength lies in its customer 360 and data quality capabilities. It provides sophisticated
ML models capable of integrating entities across domains through built-in entity-graph
modeling in real time, automated stewardship, and a secure and scalable platform. Its mature
product offering is multidomain and includes advanced data enrichment, business templates,
and features for compliance. Reltio could enhance its offering by pivoting from a UI-based
configuration to automated mapping, consolidation, and lineage for better time to value for
customers. Reference customers value the UI, search features, ease of interdomain
navigation, and data reliability but suggest more transparency in pricing, better customer
support, and improved data lineage. Reltio is best suited for customers looking for cloud-
native MDM and especially those with a global footprint, multiple data residency needs, and
full data management built in.

SAP provides a mature, governed, and compliant multidomain MDM. SAP Master Data
Governance (MDG) is based on SAP’s High-performance ANalytic Appliance (HANA), an in-
memory database and part of their broader Business Technology Platform (BTP). SAP’s distinct
vision is to have a modular approach that enables federated master data governance and use
this to offer pricing flexibility, which is tiered and deployment based. Its strategy is to improve
intelligence and agility, while reducing the total cost of ownership through cloud migration.
SAP’s strength lies in the large customer base and ecosystem of its own products and
partners, and it leverages these strengths to provide great customer service and increase
adoption.
 adoption.

SAP’s years of presence in the industries enables it to offer multiple business templates,
improve data quality with rule-mining, and provide governance with auto classification and
population. It supports multiple compliance standards across industries with automated
validations. SAP delivers dynamic scaling, sync options, enrichment sources, and audit trail.
SAP’s weakness is absence of native lineage and lagging AI. Improvements in AI would
enhance automated integration, traceability, and overall time to value. Reference customers
like MDG integration with SAP applications, but one customer highlighted the struggle with
non-SAP integrations. SAP MDG is a tried and trusted, fully governed, compliant solution for
companies that are already invested in the SAP ecosystem and have the technical resources
to make other integrations work.

TIBCO Software offers a model-driven, domain-agnostic MDM with pricing options.

TIBCO Software, a business unit of Cloud Software Group, has made TIBCO EBX a
cornerstone of its overall vision for its Connected Intelligence platform, encompassing
universal integration, AI-infused data fabric, and analytics for any use case. The vision also
drives differentiated configuration, deployment, management, and analytics through TIBCO
Control Plane (TCP). Combined with the TIBCO Cloud Passport, it offers a remarkable range of
pricing options, and it’s easy to track and understand usage. TIBCO is strategically innovating
to create a metadata and model-driven, AI-/ML-assisted, easy-to-use, multidomain MDM that
can seamlessly integrate with its multiple analytics solutions. The actual roadmap doesn’t
quite live up to the innovation plans and includes many items with comparatively low R&D
spend.

TIBCO has exceptional data integration using metadata plane for automation. TIBCO scales
dynamically and sync is triggered as per customer specification or when a change is made. It
offers configurable validations and multiple standards to support compliance. Reference data
supports enrichment, role-based access control provides security, and interconnected
domains assist in multidomain experience. These offerings are on par with competition.
TIBCO’s capabilities in delivering entity 360 views, data intelligence (especially governance),
and out-of-the-box (OOTB) business templates for key industries are limited, which impacts
time to value for customers. One reference customer mentioned the lack of industry-specific
data domains and accelerator packs. TIBCO is well-suited for companies setting up an
enterprise-level data fabric that requires a scalable, industry- and domain-agnostic MDM
solution.

Strong Performers

IBM’s MDM is integrated in data fabric, but data intelligence is limited. IBM’s
InfoSphere MDM is an integrated part of its data fabric portfolio, IBM Cloud Pak for Data.
InfoSphere delivers trusted master data with the flexibility of deployment on-premises and on
IBM-managed cloud services. Its differentiated innovation is driven by data fabric and
metadata capabilities where complementary services for data management, analytics, data
science, and AI are brought together. IBM’s vision is to manage data proactively through
monitoring and governance, accelerate insights with near real-time data consolidation, and
drive innovation through self-service data access and exploration. The roadmap focuses more
on data fabric than on automating MDM capabilities. Pricing is complicated due to the mix of
consumption, storage, and compute.

IBM offers role-based access control, multiple compliance standards for various industries,
and data integration capabilities along with scalable infrastructure as part of the data fabric
development. Availability of standard business templates; data context through metadata
scrapping; and data management functions such as data governance, data quality, data
harmonization keeps IBM on par with competition. IBM’s weaknesses include limited reference
data sources for data enrichment, traceability of data transformations, and lack of automations,
leading to longer time to value. IBM is good for large companies with complex ecosystems
where the application of data fabric architecture will create connected solutions. IBM declined
to participate in the full Forrester Wave evaluation process.

Stibo Systems offers unparalleled, product-driven, multidomain MDM but lags in

lineage. Stibo Systems’ MDM solution is offered only on-premises and on public cloud,
missing hybrid and multicloud deployments. Although its MDM platform is not domain specific,
it leverages the strength of its well-known PIM solution to accelerate growth. It’s innovating by
connecting master data to ESG initiatives for better visibility and consolidation of data while
strategically improving platform capabilities. These include federated master data governance,
stewardship workflows, and increasing system connectors. The expansion of support to
industries other than retail, distribution, manufacturing, and CPG will help Stibo Systems
become truly domain agnostic. Pricing is primarily consumption based but complex, which
impacts transparency.

PIM is Stibo Systems’ wheelhouse, through which it excels in product 360 and data
integration. Data intelligence features like quality rules, workflows, regulatory compliance,
access controls, and data sync are competitive. It’s on par with other vendors in delivering
high quality reference data to aid enrichment, implementing dynamic survivorship using
automation, and ensuring accurate data validation and classification for improved data
matching. Stibo Systems is facing scalability challenges when dealing with high volumes of
data. Reference customers appreciate the “MDM Academy” that helps with training, adoption,
and improving utilization of the solution. However, references are looking for better customer
service and pricing options. Stibo Systems is suitable for product-driven organizations looking
to connect products with other domains and innovating with insights from complete product
360 on a multidomain MDM.

Syndigo offers a cloud-native multidomain MDM but should improve lineage.

Formerly known as Riversand, Syndigo has revamped its platform and now exclusively offers a
cloud-native solution that is flexible and scalable. Syndigo’s all-encompassing vision for active
content management includes PIM, DAM, syndication, and advanced analytics. Its MDM
solution is a cornerstone of this wide portfolio. Syndigo’s planned roadmap strategically
focuses on developing purpose-built business apps, acquiring customers through partners,
and overcoming some of the solution’s weaknesses like data sources for enrichment and AI-
assisted lineage. However, challenges include limited user adoption of its full product line, with
only one-third of customers using the entire product suite. Primarily consumption-based
pricing layered with many add-ons restrict pricing flexibility and transparency.

Syndigo’s content management for product assists in comprehensive product 360, connecting
it across domains and systems. It offers dynamic scaling and multiple sync options across
apps and distributed locations for superior scalability. Other capabilities, like matching with
continuously trained AI, meeting compliance using OOTB industry standards, and improving
data quality with native checks and validation, are on par with other vendors. Syndigo lags in
providing dynamic masking and lineage outside of the platform. Reference customers liked
the ease of mastering and enrichment but are looking for better survivorship control and
business templates for non-product domains. Syndigo suits companies looking to improve
their product management across various channels with multidomain capabilities.

Semarchy demonstrates time to value but lags in data enrichment. Semarchy’s Unified
Data Platform offers on-premises, public, hybrid, and multicloud environments. It encompasses
an xDM module for MDM activities and xDI for broader data integration. Semarchy has an
ambitious roadmap to develop enhanced data governance capabilities such as metadata
management, automated data discovery, classification, and cataloging. This will assist its
vision of creating an intelligent unified solution assisted by automation. However, as compared
to the competition, Semarchy’s roadmap for innovation is stretched in areas of data
intelligence, UI, and architecture.

Semarchy is adept at providing time to value without requiring highly skilled resources to
maintain the solution. Infrastructure deployment and installation requires part-time technical
support which can be done through systems integration partners. It’s on par in providing a
multidomain experience, individual domain support, rule-based data quality, compliance
standards, and bi-temporal modeling for traceability. Semarchy’s weaknesses include lack of
ML automation in data integration, native reference data, and security capabilities. A reference
customer positively recalled support from Semarchy when the go-live exceeded three months.
Another reference critiqued data enrichment and survivorship, noting, “Survivorship is
challenging and worst when complexity of match and merge increases.” Semarchy is a fit for
companies looking for a multidomain solution with a lower budget and that can compromise
on some advanced features available in other products.

Ataccama has data intelligence but lagging scalability is a challenge. Ataccama ONE
platform has ONE MDM, offered for on-premises, public, hybrid, and multicloud environments.
Ataccama ONE contains other modules for data governance, quality, observability, and
analytics. It has a well-defined vision to develop a unified solution for customers to begin with
what they need and add capabilities as they expand. Its innovation lies in explainable AI for
business and technical processes, improvements in scalability, and providing data intelligence
 business and technical processes, improvements in scalability, and providing data intelligence
natively. Ataccama’s planned enhancements are supporting its vision for a unified platform
with Kubernetes-native data processing, new UI, and end-to-end configuration. Its strategy
lags in terms of partner ecosystem (number and variety) and pricing options.

A unified platform approach has aided Ataccama in delivering key strengths of the solution.
MDM activities like data integration, matching, merging, and enrichment are supported and
enhanced by integrated data intelligence capabilities such as embedded data quality
validations, stewardship workflows, access control, traceability, and metadata management.
Ataccama needs to enhance its support for product domain with native connectors to PIM and
DAM, scale dynamically, and offer multiple sync options. Time to value is on par but could
accelerate with improvement in configuration. A reference customer said, “Tool is easy to use
even for fresh college grads with minimum to no training.” However, another reference
complained about spending more than six months for simple go-live due to poor
configurations. Ataccama is good for companies targeting cost-effective, interconnected
multidomain MDM with integrated support for analytics, dashboards, and data intelligence.

Contenders

Profisee is great for Azure shops but lags in integration and compliance. Profisee
focuses on pure play MDM capabilities offered on-premises and cloud-native. Profisee drives
product adoption through Profisee Academy, a customer success team, and proactive
engagements. Its adaptive cards integration will streamline actioning and enhance customer
experience, further driving adoption. It’s innovating to improve knowledge-graph and AI-driven
recommendations for matching, merging, and classification. Profisee’s vision is focused on
connecting to data fabric for better data management. However, it lags in addressing key
customer needs like augmented data quality or unified data governance. Two product editions
offer some pricing flexibility, but full matching capabilities are available only on Enterprise
Edition.

Focusing on core master data capabilities has helped Profisee deliver reliable multidomain
experience, data mastering with continuously trained AI, and connectors for reference data.
The solution is dynamically scalable and provides role-based access control and quality
improvement recommendations. Profisee’s business templates are on par, supporting a few
key industries like healthcare, financial services, retail, and manufacturing. Profisee lags in
automation and knowledge-graph, which impedes data integration, entity 360 view, and ease
of use. It falls short on facilitating consent management, compliance validation, and
certification. Reference customers like the vendor’s multidomain connectivity and
improvements in business processes. Profisee is well suited for a company using Azure
environments as it leverages Microsoft Purview for data governance and that has access to
skilled technical resources for integrations.

Precisely is a cost-effective MDM but trails in entity mastering and business

templates. Precisely’s MDM, EnterWorks, offers on-premises, public, hybrid, and multicloud
environments. Since the acquisition of Winshuttle, Precisely has improved EnterWorks by
leveraging data management functionalities in the Precisely portfolio. Its steady vision to
natively integrate EnterWorks with the Precisely Data Integrity Suite will help improve data
intelligence and integration capabilities that are presently lagging. It’s also innovating to
improve EnterWorks by advancing AI/ML capabilities. This will help it capitalize on existing
Fortune 100 clients for growth. Its strategy is to increase adoption by targeting customers of
any size with flexible pricing options ranging from customized pricing to consumption-based
pricing. Partnerships are limited and leveraged more for implementations than product
innovation.

EnterWorks integrates data enrichment within mastering workflows and leverages integration
capabilities to deliver connected multidomain to customers. The availability of native
connectors, preconfigured data governance frameworks, and stewardship workflows is on par
compared to others. Integration with its PIM provides product 360 view, supporting
unstructured product data and product lifecycle management. Features like knowledge graph,
industry templates, fine-grained access control, data encryption, and compliance certifications
need improvement. A reference customer praised its UI-based configuration, while another
reference noted that entity resolution and survivorship capabilities were not sophisticated
enough. Precisely is a good fit for customers looking to begin with a multidomain MDM that
they can enhance incrementally by adding more capabilities from the Precisely Data Integrity
Suite.

Viamedici offers PIM-led multidomain MDM but lags in data governance and
lineage. Viamedici’s Enterprise Product Information Management (EPIM) suite contains MDM,
PIM, and DAM and is offered for on-premises, public, hybrid, and multicloud environments. The
product has impressive adoption and a large user base that is supported through regular
training and communication on product features and launches. Their extensive partnerships
span systems integrators, technology, and innovation. Pricing options and schemes for
multiyear deals offer flexibility. Viamedici’s vision is limited to product-related capabilities like
guided selling; configure, price, quote (CPQ); and industries such as manufacturing and
distribution. Viamedici’s innovation and product roadmap is likewise impacted by the vision,
limiting its expansion of AI/ML-driven automation, data intelligence, and real-time connectors.

Viamedici’s dedication to product-driven industries naturally facilitates exceptional product

360 with PIM enablement. Other strengths of Viamedici include real-time matching and
merging, integrated data enrichment, interconnected domains, prebuilt models and
dashboards, dynamic scaling, multiple sync options, and granular access control. Viamedici
lags others evaluated in supporting multiple standards with automated validations. Overall
time to value is lacking due to limited AI in OOTB workflows, policy management, traceability,
and governance federation. One reference customer noted, “We don’t spend much time on
mastering but on integrating with other systems because of limited native connectors.”
Viamedici is relevant for customers looking to operationalize their product data with
multidomain MDM that can be extended for other product specific capabilities (like PIM).

Tamr excels in mastering but data intelligence and multidomain is lagging. Tamr is
offered primarily as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution and is offered on-premises and on
public cloud. It is highly focused on mastering and enriching data to deliver it to target
applications or cloud storage. Tamr’s vision is geared toward inculcating a “data-as-a-product”
mindset while providing clean and curated data that drives business value. Tamr’s innovation
centers around data unification through advanced AI that supports classification, mapping,
and deduplication. It is supported by a large R&D budget. Its roadmap for MDM is missing
improvements in complementary capabilities like data lineage, governance, and security to
develop enterprise MDM. Adoption is low because customers utilize this product for individual
use cases, and not on a continuous basis.

Tamr delivers unmatched patented ML for mastering and for natively stored high quality data
for enrichment, which enables them to provide faster time to value. Tamr’s support for real-
time data integration, customer 360 views, and metadata management is on par with other
vendors. Tamr will need to improve interconnection between domains and support knowledge
graph to deliver a multidomain experience. It offers limited masking, access control,
compliance standards, and security certifications. It syncs hourly, impeding data scalability.
Reference customers appreciate the customer service, pricing, and especially the matching,
merging, dynamic survivorship, and enrichment capabilities, but they recognize that it’s not a
governance solution. Tamr is a good fit for customers who are looking for a quick and easy
way to consolidate their data for specific use cases like company or people mastering, ESG,
reporting, data science, or AI.

Prospecta has flexible pricing MDM but could benefit from data quality
advancements. Prospecta Software’s Master Data Online (MDO) is offered for on-premises,
public, hybrid, and multicloud environments with a strategic focus on asset-heavy industries
like mining, energy, chemical, manufacturing, and pharma. Prospecta’s vision is to embed the
platform with data intelligence and self-service through low-code configuration to infuse
master data ubiquitously in decision-making. The vision is strategically positioned around its
partnership and tight integration with SAP. The innovation aligns with its vision to serve target
industries with accelerators, OOTB standards, and enhancements to support use cases like
ESG. However, the delivery roadmap is weaker around improvements in AI (planned only for
rule proposal), UI, and non-SAP systems integrations. There are only a few customers on the
current product version.

Prospecta supports customer 360 with multiple prebuilt models, persona-based customer
views, and reporting. It serves multiple industries with templates and supports federated
governance. Prospecta delivers remarkable time to value when SAP systems are involved. It
lags in native enrichment, traceability, and dynamic survivorship and scalability. The lack of
knowledge graph hurts multidomain and entity 360 capabilities. Other areas of challenge
include compliance validations, access control, and rule-mining for data quality. A reference
customer commented positively on the customer service: “The platform was able to fulfil most
 customer commented positively on the customer service: “The platform was able to fulfil most
of our general MDM requirements, but what helped tip the scales in their favor was continuous
customer support and improvement of the platform as demanded.” Prospecta would be a
good pick for customers searching for a low-cost, SAP-friendly MDM platform.

Challenger

Syniti is a scalable low-cost MDM but end-to-end multidomain is challenging. Syniti

licenses Syniti Knowledge Platform containing MDM as a module. It includes other data
management capabilities such as data quality, data replication, assessment, analytics, and
governance and is offered on the cloud. It has partnerships with technology vendors,
especially with SAP, and its integrators with SAP products allows it to integrate other
enterprise data to improve data quality. It also allows for some flexibility in pricing. Syniti’s
vision is to assist customers undergoing digital transformation and migrations, thereby
focusing on breadth rather than depth of any individual module. This limits innovation in
modern MDM capabilities and advanced AI/ML to augment data quality and accelerate data
governance.

Syniti’s experience with migration projects helps its MDM with good matching, merging, and
traceability of data across systems. It offers knowledge packs for industries, scales with
customer demands, and provides overall time to value by leveraging the unified platform.
Syniti lags in delivering interconnected domains for multidomain experiences, enriched entity
profiles, and advanced AI for data integration, mapping, and classification. Automated rule-
mining, compliance validations, and fine-grained access control are a few more areas of
challenge. Reference customers appreciate the technical knowledge and expertise that Syniti
brings to the table, but struggle to sustain the system without skilled resources. Syniti could
benefit customers looking for cost effective MDM focused on digital transformation and SAP
integrations. Syniti declined to participate in the full Forrester Wave evaluation process.

Evaluation Overview
We grouped our evaluation criteria into three high-level categories:

Current offering. Each vendor’s position on the vertical axis of the Forrester Wave graphic
indicates the strength of its current offering. Key criteria for these solutions include matching,
linking, and entity resolution; data enrichment; data integration; customer 360 domain; product
360 domain; multidomain; business templates; deployment; time to value; scalability;
compliance; security; data quality; data context; lineage; and data governance.

Strategy. Placement on the horizontal axis indicates the strength of the vendors’ strategies.
We evaluated their vision, innovation, roadmap, partner ecosystem, adoption, pricing flexibility,
and transparency.

Market presence. Represented by the size of the markers on the graphic, our market
presence scores reflect each vendor’s product revenue and number of customers.
Vendor Inclusion Criteria

Each of the vendors we included in this assessment has:

An enterprise-class MDM platform offering. Vendors must include basic support for the
following MDM capabilities: data integration; data quality; data lineage; data governance; MDM
tooling; data replication/synchronization to apps/processes; and one or more domains
including customer, product, supplier, and asset.

A standalone current MDM offering. We included only products that are currently available
and not tied to any particular applications (such as packaged applications, SaaS offering, etc.)
or a specific business intelligence (BI), predictive analytics, or middleware stack. The product
must run in a standalone environment to support various kinds of workloads. It should have a
stock-keeping unit (SKU).

A referenceable installation base. We evaluated vendors with 30 or more enterprise

customers using their MDM product or service.

Meets minimum revenue requirements. We chose vendors with a minimum of $10 million
in annual revenue for MDM.

Forrester’s enterprise customer interest. Forrester included only vendors that customers
mentioned several times in the past 12 months during Forrester inquiries, guidance sessions,
customer shortlists, consulting projects, and/or case studies related to MDM or related topics.

Supplemental Material
Online Resource

We publish all our Forrester Wave scores and weightings in an Excel file that provides detailed
product evaluations and customizable rankings; download this tool by clicking the link at the
beginning of this report on Forrester.com. We intend these scores and default weightings to serve
only as a starting point and encourage readers to adapt the weightings to fit their individual needs.

The Forrester Wave Methodology

A Forrester Wave is a guide for buyers considering their purchasing options in a technology
marketplace. To offer an equitable process for all participants, Forrester follows The Forrester
Wave™ Methodology to evaluate participating vendors.

In our review, we conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors to consider for the
evaluation. From that initial pool of vendors, we narrow our final list based on the inclusion criteria.
We then gather details of product and strategy through a detailed questionnaire, demos/briefings,
and customer reference surveys/interviews. We use those inputs, along with the analyst’s
experience and expertise in the marketplace, to score vendors, using a relative rating system that
compares each vendor against the others in the evaluation.

We include the Forrester Wave publishing date (quarter and year) clearly in the title of each
 Forrester Wave report. We evaluated the vendors participating in this Forrester Wave using
materials they provided to us by April 7th, 2023, and did not allow additional information after that
point. We encourage readers to evaluate how the market and vendor offerings change over time.

In accordance with our vendor review policy, Forrester asks vendors to review our findings prior to
publishing to check for accuracy. Vendors marked as nonparticipating vendors in the Forrester
Wave graphic met our defined inclusion criteria but declined to participate in or contributed only
partially to the evaluation. We score these vendors in accordance with our vendor participation
policy and publish their positioning along with those of the participating vendors.

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We conduct all our research, including Forrester Wave evaluations, in accordance with the integrity
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