Another day another acquisition for IBM, since IBM and Oracle Larry Elision exchanged words about DB2. Initiate Systems is a provider of Master Data Management products and has very strong product line.
Initiate’s particular strengths lie in the health care and government sectors. Oracle has Hyperion's Master Data Management Tool renamed "Data Relationship Management" (DRM), but not as many clients use this as Initiate systems.

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IBM Buying MDM Vendor Initiate Systems - CIO news

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Master Data Management (MDM)

Take advantage of Data Source Views to integrate data from across the enterprise based on a Unified Dimension Model that consolidates data from heterogeneous, enterprise-wide data stores such as SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, SAP and Teradata. The UDM creates a holistic view of the business, helping end users gain enterprise-wide insight.

The Microsoft MDM solution will be built upon the solid foundations of Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Windows Communication Foundation, the ADO.Net Entity Data Model (EDM), Integration Services, BizTalk Server, and other key Microsoft technologies.

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As companies grow and evolve, it becomes essential to manage master data across information silos that result from mergers and acquisitions, departmental initiatives, or legacy system proliferation. Data consistency, integrity, quality and accuracy can suffer creating a process that lacks integrity. Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management provides enterprises with a solution to build consistency within master data assets despite endless changes within the underlying transactional and analytical systems.

[via In 2 Hyperion Blog]

Got a question today about the new features on Oracle Hyperion DRM v11. In terms of this new release to be honest, most of the features had been pretty much the same as version 9.3.2.

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