SAP Tuesday emphasized the importance of users continually maintaining master data, a single version of attributes that best describe products or customers, as corporations work to rearchitect their IT systems.Defining a company’s master data can help customers improve the quality of their core data, and reduce errors and out-of-date or duplicated information. It’s also essential to successfully implementing a service-oriented architecture. SOA, a way to create and manage IT systems through reusable software and services, is proving increasingly popular among corporations looking to more effectively use their existing data.Companies wanting to consolidate IT resources should first define a list of master data, according to Shai Agassi, president of SAP’s product and technology group. But that definition process shouldn’t be a one-time thing. “Master data is a treadmill; you need to continue to go on it,” he said during a keynote address at the Americas’ SAP Users Group (ASUG) in Orlando Tuesday. ASUG is collocated with SAP’s Sapphire user conference.SAP is among many vendors, including IBM and Oracle, currently talking up master-data management (MDM). Earlier this month, IBM highlighted the enhanced MDM capabilities in the latest version of its WebSphere Product Center middleware. As companies go through mergers and acquisitions, the first thing they need to do post-purchase is get a list of the acquired firm’s master data and integrate it with their own, Agassi said.While discussing consolidation, Agassi couldn’t resist taking a few shots at SAP’s main business applications rival, Oracle. During his presentation, he put on-screen a list of software vendors, including PeopleSoft and Siebel, that Oracle acquired. “They met the big, bad wolf and disappeared,” he said. Agassi compared Oracle’s taste for acquisition to his childhood love of pop rocks, sugar candy that fizzled on the tongue. “There’s the initial excitement, the bad aftertaste and the desire to do it again,” he quipped.Agassi reiterated SAP’s take on SOA, that the approach needs to include enterprise services developed by third parties including SAP as well as specific services developed in house by individual customers. “Every 10 years, the IT industry comes up with a three-letter acronym that’s supposed to solve all the problems of the world,” he said. “We actually believe in SOA; it’s not going to fade away in a few years.”He drew a comparison between SOA and language. Think of SOA as being a way to bring together letter and words, while enterprise services provide the semantics so that those words are readily understood within IT systems, he said. Corporations are creating their own dictionaries as they populate repositories with internally and externally developed enterprise services, he said.-China Martens, IDG News ServiceFor related news coverage, read SAP to Use HP Print Mgmt. Technology.Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content BrandPost The future of trust—no more playing catch up Broadcom: 2023 Tech Trends That Transform IT By Eric Chien, Director of Security Response, Symantec Enterprise Division, Broadcom Mar 31, 2023 5 mins Security BrandPost TCS gives Blackhawk Network an edge with Microsoft Cloud In this case study, Blackhawk Network’s Cara Renfroe joins Tata Consultancy Services’ Rakesh Kumar and Microsoft’s Nilendu Pattanaik to explain how TCS transformed the gift card company’s customer engagement and global operati By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 31, 2023 1 min Financial Services Industry Cloud Computing IT Leadership BrandPost How TCS pioneered the ‘borderless workspace’ with Microsoft 365 Microsoft’s modern workplace solution proved a perfect fit for improving productivity and collaboration, while maintaining security of systems and data. By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 31, 2023 1 min Financial Services Industry Microsoft Cloud Computing BrandPost Supply chain decarbonization: The missing link to net zero By improving the quality of global supply chain data, enterprises can better measure their true carbon footprint and make progress toward a net-zero business ecosystem. By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 31, 2023 2 mins Retail Industry Supply Chain Green IT Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe