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a company’s master data can help customers improve the quality of their core data, and reduce errors and out-of-date or duplicated information.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 opinion Website spoofing: risks, threats, and mitigation strategies for CIOs In this article, we take a look at how CIOs can tackle website spoofing attacks and the best ways to prevent them. By Yash Mehta Dec 01, 2023 5 mins CIO Cyberattacks Security brandpost Sponsored by Catchpoint Systems Inc. Gain full visibility across the Internet Stack with IPM (Internet Performance Monitoring) Today’s IT systems have more points of failure than ever before. Internet Performance Monitoring provides visibility over external networks and services to mitigate outages. By Neal Weinberg Dec 01, 2023 3 mins IT Operations brandpost Sponsored by Zscaler How customers can save money during periods of economic uncertainty Now is the time to overcome the challenges of perimeter-based architectures and reduce costs with zero trust. By Zscaler Dec 01, 2023 4 mins Security feature LexisNexis rises to the generative AI challenge With generative AI, the legal information services giant faces its most formidable disruptor yet. That’s why CTO Jeff Reihl is embracing and enhancing the technology swiftly to keep in front of the competition. By Paula Rooney Dec 01, 2023 6 mins Generative AI Digital Transformation Cloud Computing 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