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MDM Maturity Levels 101

Level of modeling

Semantic data Semantic MDM
modeling

DANGER

Static MDM
Classic data
modeling

Virtual MDM
Richness and
expressiveness
IT Ambiguous Business

Figure 5.1. The MDM maturity model

A semantic MDM system offers the only level of maturity
that interests business users. It goes together with the total
re-appropriation of the knowledge of the data, using the
formal expression of business states which govern the
behavior of the business objects managed. The data model
absorbs some of the data validation rules, which reduces the
number of bespoke software developments needed. With a
semantic MDM system, business users must be able to
distinguish between business objects’ states and states
related to organizational processes or workflow. IT
practitioners have little chance of correctly identifying these
two levels of states. To achieve this, an understanding of the
business beyond IT is required. Unfortunately, business
users often express their knowledge via a computer system,
already supposedly understood by IT specialists who in turn
think, incorrectly, that they know the business better than
their users! Unless the company finds an exit route from this
way of working, an MDM system can only reproduce a part
of the useless complexity coming from the existing functional