Global master data management (MDM) software revenue is likely to rise by 21% to $1.9 billion in 2012, research firm Gartner said today.
MDM comprises a set of processes and tools for management of the non-transactional data of a firm.
"This is the biggest annual growth we have seen for this market since 2008. Pressures to optimise costs and efficiencies in a heterogeneous IT environment are driving organisations to turn to MDM as a more efficient way to manage and maintain data across multiple sources," Gartner Research Director Colleen Graham said.
"MDM has become a critical discipline required for dealing with the challenges of social data, big data and data in the cloud," she added.
The MDM market is expected to reach $3.2 billion by 2015, with North America and Europe driving the growth.
"North America and Europe will drive the demand for MDM. Both regions will grow at a steady pace to reach the billion dollar-mark -- in 2013 for North America and in 2015 for Europe. In 2013, MDM software revenue will see faster growth in the Asia-Pacific, where revenue will increase by 30% from 2012 to reach $209 million," Gartner said.
The overall MDM market is dominated by three major players -- IBM, Oracle and SAP.
Many new MDM vendors and offerings will be focused on areas such as open source, as well as cloud computing or software as a service, it said.
"In the next four years, we expect larger vendors will continue to acquire for this specialisation while smaller vendors will acquire each other to build market share and increase the functionality within their portfolios," Gartner Research Director Chad Eschinger said.
"The market for MDM of customer data is expected to reach $644 million in 2012 and to exceed $1 billion in 2015. MDM of customer data helps an organisation cross-sell and cross-market, as well as retain customers and provide a consistent high-quality customer experience," it said.
"The market for MDM of product data, which helps an organisation store product-related master data, meta-data, or both, is projected to reach $688 million in 2012 and to surpass $1.1 billion in 2015," it added.
