HP Services Target Cohesive Information Management StrategyHP Services Target Cohesive Information Management Strategy

HP is not a name you'd associate with master data management (MDM) or data quality software, but executives at the recently renamed HP Business Intelligence Solutions unit say that's one reason why HP is in an ideal position to offer impartial advice and implementation services around a cohesive MDM, data quality and data governance strategy. Thus, HP this week unveiled deeper MDM, Information Quality and Information Governance services that expand on the data integration and BI consulting practice HP gained with the late 2006 acquisition of Knightsbridge.

"Many companies are still struggling to get their arms around their enterprise shared resources, meaning aligning around the customer and product master data, reconciling their metadata strategies and getting their arms around data stewardship between the business and IT communities," says Valerie Logan, a Knightsbridge veteran and now a strategy and planning executive for HP BI Solutions. "Hence we've developed enhanced capabilities around master data, information quality and information governance."

A core offering for HP BI Solutions is the Neoview enterprise data warehousing platform, but it also has a long history, through Knightsbridge, of working with third-party software partners including Siperian and SAP on the MDM front, SAS DataFlux on the data quality front and Ab Iinitio and Informatica for data integration software.

"We're not announcing specific partners in this launch, but we'll be working with a combination of best-of-breed software offerings as well as the MDM and information quality products within leading ERP suites," Logan says.

Late last year HP reorganized the formerly separate Neoview product organization and the business intelligence services group that had its roots in Knightsbridge. The renamed HP Business Intelligence Solutions unit is in a good position to offer impartial advice, says Kristina Robinson, a Teradata veteran who was brought over from HP's imaging business to serve as vice president and general manager.

"There are often projects that are enterprise-data-warehouse platform specific and those that are ERP and front-end tool specific, but we think people are looking for folks that can come in and talk about where this huge opportunity of information management sits and bring all those initiatives together," Robinson says. "That's what we're looking to do with these services."