Enterprise Product Management - All Comments

re: Centralized vs. Federated – is there a right answer?

Jagadish Baddukonda — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 10:16:19 GMT

Could not agree more Doug.

And one more practical aspect, I would like to add is that, the definition of Master Data in the identified data domains is specific to the way in which the business operates and the business drivers of the organisation at that point of time.

For e.g. the time that a Customer Logs in (Time and Data stamp) into the Self Care portal is normally seen as transactional data. However if there is a mandate to reduce / increase the number of such log ins for whatever purpose, then that becomes master data under the Customer Data domain and needs to ne analysed upon. What is important is that the different applications which maintain the context of each log in (done via the portal) need to be able to provide the required info or rather the "master" / centralized or if I may use the word "Harmonized" application should be able to draw the necesary information from each of the transactional applications and use that data.

Same goes with Product Usage Analytics. However for the purpose of Product Catalog (Introduction and maintain products and services), then a centralized Product master looks a viable option. Ofcourse the product reference data between application needs to be made available

Hence now it is not only Centralized VS Federated but also a HARMONIZED approach that is also in the fray.

re: Centralized vs. Federated – is there a right answer?

Doug Newdick — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 00:08:49 GMT

There are actually two different dimensions to the federated vs centralised debate here. The first (and IMO the most important) is the business dimension - are product decisions, product architectures, re-use managed separately by different parts of the business, or are they managed centrally? The second dimension is the technology dimension - is product data, data architecture etc. managed by a single central IT system, or is it managed separately by different IT systems, and only a consolidated view obtained? I think that we can have any combination of central vs federated for business and technology (though the most efficient will be when they are aligned). Even if you have centralised technology, you will still not achieve the sorts of re-use and efficiency that you are after if each separate part of the business can create their products without paying attention to concerns around re-use and standardisation.

Which approach is better will be determined by the way that your organisation operates: do separate business units compete by offering localised and nimble product offerings, or does your organisation compete by seeking economies of scale and efficiencies through standardisation?

re: Centralized vs. Federated – is there a right answer?

Jagadish Baddukonda — Tue, 31 May 2011 10:59:01 GMT

Hi,

Both , Centralised Data management and Federated Data Management especially when it comes to product data Modelling and management and Customer Data management have thier advantages. From a purely theritical perspective, the Centralised approach appears to be better. However the world is not perfect and there is always the problem of legacy and change management and hence the Federated approach looks good.

Let us look at the aim of data management /

Central Product Catalog

- It should be an Information repository with persistent data.

Federated Data management fails here

- Should be Multi Domain.

Both the approaches work here but in the Federated approach it depends on how the data governance is established in the mother application i.e. how the CRM models the Sales view and the same is modelled in the Billing. So the dependancy on the CRM / Billing / TechnicalProduct catalog is high

- Process centric approach

Federated approach fails here

Data Synchronization

Again not available in Federated approach

Essentailly when product harmonization and product data master is the need of the hour, sadly the federated approach fails, since it essentially is a Access Only apporach and does nto fix the problem of data harmonization and data governance.

re: Centralized vs. Federated – is there a right answer?

Raja Sekhar Ravi — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:46:43 GMT

It is nice to see a post on federated vs. centralized product data management. The author has detailed the advantages and disadvantages of these two approaches.

My point of view is to have a centralised federated product data management. As author rightly mentioned a centralised data management provides a holistic and consolidated view of business to the IT world. With this IT world also can easily understand what needs to be done to bring these products quickly to the market. I prefer this centralised data management to be confined to logical models and business language. This facilitates a single truth of source to the federated product configuration and development in the respective B/OSS applications. This way it provides control over the implementation view to the business view and ensures that IT applications are not deviating from the business view.

re: Centralized vs. Federated – is there a right answer?

John Reilly — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:52:55 GMT

Right, Martin...the SID can be used in both cases. Often the SID is used to federate as a first step towards centralization/convergence.

And, sometimes the decision is dependent on applications currently in place. Here is an example where federation may be desirable. There are two inventory applications in place, one for fixed networks and one for mobile networks. Each of the two applications contains functionality specialized to the type of network. And, one cannot be used in place of the other, but a consolidated (federated) view of the networks is desired.

Bottom line is that the current environment and future goals need to be considered when making a choice.

re: Centralized vs. Federated – is there a right answer?

Martin Creaner — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:13:17 GMT

Catherine, very interesting. Are there implications in this debate for what we do with the SID. Logic would say that the SID is equally suitable for either a centralized or federated world, but are the subtle differences that make it more suited to one than the other?

re: Yes We Can, to borrow a battle cry

Ditmar Rose — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 07:59:05 GMT

Enterprise Product Management has many different aspects and influencences. I hope that we will also hear something about product decomposing into services. Our major goal today is to decouple products from servic, e.g. to make services somewhat invariant.

br Ditmar

re: Yes We Can, to borrow a battle cry

Jagadish Baddukonda — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 06:54:52 GMT

Enterprise Product management is infact a very interesting area.

I am not being skeptical here, but despite understanding the advantages that EPM offers, what exactly would be a compelling value proposition for an EPM when CRM products have very good Product configuration capabilities as also synchorizining the new products / changes in the existing products to the downstream billing and Service provisioning applications is eminently possible.

Rgrds,

Jagadish

re: Yes We Can, to borrow a battle cry

James Moore — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:24:41 GMT

Very interested to see what Catherine and Tribold have to say but I thought we were looking for the industry to become more 'Customer Centric'. As worthwhile as it is to manage the lifecycle of a product efficiently and effectively its full value is realised only through the customer

re: Yes We Can, to borrow a battle cry

Steven Rdzak — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:49:21 GMT

Look forward to your posts! Product Management for Telecom can use a fresh Enterprise perspective.