SAP continues to score own goals around its troubled MDM offering.  At a Las Vegas conference the usually well-informed and ever-urbane Shai Agassi explained to attendees how MDM was critical to the success of SOA.  All true, but this runs up against the unfortunate problem that SAP’s own MDM offering is, to put it politely, not one of the current stars of their software firmament.  As noted in the article, despite SAP’s huge customer base and famed account control, they are hard pressed to rustle up a few customer references.  It is actually worse than that.  I know for a fact that an SAP customer was, just weeks ago, told that the SAP MDM offering would not be ready for effective production use for at least 18 months.  The customer was not told that by one of SAP’s competitors, but by SAP themselves at a private briefing in Walldorf. It seems that this news has yet to fully spread even amongst SAP.  The SAP MDM product marketing manager is quoted as saying the customer base is “quietly increasing”, which in the usually ultra-spun lingo of product managers translates as less than wild enthusiasm and delight.  IBM Global Services make a stack of money from implementing SAP, so when they say “it’s very difficult to find the customers using the software” then they probably mean it. 

I found it pretty revealing when SAP didn’t even show up at either of the CDI/MDM conferences run earlier this year by Aaron Zornes (one in San Francisco, one in London). This at least seemed a prudent approach.  Let’s face it, all software companies have some things go better than others, so if you are struggling with a particular product then it seems sensible to keep your head down, avoid publicity and get on with fixing the issues rather than calling attention to the problem.  This is what makes this high profile “MDM is key” speech seem either very bold indeed, or a bit of a gaffe (or, as they say at Real Madrid, a bit of a Woodgate).