One of the outcomes of the recession has been that a lot of companies have cut back on long-term projects, especially where ROI may not be clear. And talking to various people it is clear that one of the areas so hit has been large hub-based MDM projects. That is because these typically take 18 months to 2 years to implement, require a lot of investment in time and money, and the benefits are a long way in the future.

However, that doesn’t mean that people aren’t still interested in MDM. But what it has meant is an increased focus on quick wins that can be attained either through adopting a registry-based MDM solution, which perhaps takes as little as a couple of months to implement, or by focusing on data quality in the first instance.

This isn’t to say that these companies aren’t still interested in moving to a hub-based approach at a later stage, they may well be. But, equally, they may not. Or it may have slipped down their priority list.

Perhaps more interesting is what will happen next. My guess is that a lot of companies are going to continue to be careful about their commitments for some time to come. A double-dip recession is still not out of the question. So, while IT budgets may be growing I would expect many companies to continue to look askance at long-term projects.

By the time we are well and truly out of recession it will probably be around three years total. The question is: will the mindset around MDM have been permanently changed during that time? Personally, I hope so. I have always felt that vendors were too eager to push the hub-based message and that too few users were taking a more incremental approach by starting at the registry level.