Will cloud computing applications become the golden record for customer data?

Grazed from TechTarget.  Author: Jack Vaughn.

It has long been thought that the place to find the most accurate information about customers is in a company’s enterprise resource planning system. But some within the IT industry say cloud computing applications — and specifically Software as a Service-based sales applications like Salesforce.com — may eventually become the place to find the most up-to-date customer data. A subtle shift in power may be underway.

Master data management (MDM) programs may someday look on Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud computing applications as the “newspaper of record” for customer data, some viewers predict. They may already provide access to the best and most recent information about customer names, addresses, phone numbers and histories, according to MDM veteran Zeb Mahmood, head of product management and strategy at SnapLogic, a data integration software vendor based in San Mateo, Calif.

“We are seeing that a lot of customers are using Salesforce as a source of seed data,” he said. “It has the data that is newer, and thus much cleaner than on-premises older systems.”  Mahmood believes SaaS cloud applications may soon take precedence in MDM planning initiatives, and he sees this as a sign of SaaS industry maturity. “If you look at Salesforce, they have their flagship CRM product. But their CRM has matured from being the secondary CRM in the enterprise to being the primary CRM in many enterprises,” he said.