Microsoft Master Data Management Product Technology Preview

Back in November of last year I mentioned that we were shipping the MDM Technology Preview early. Since that time we've had great response to the program. Over 100 customers, partners and Service providers have enlisted in the technology preview. Some of our customers are currently building proof of concept implementations. Every day we get more requests to download the technology preview and these days, most of the requests are from customers. If you're interested, the link above will take you to the previous post that explains how to get involved. 

Some have confused this release with a TAP or CTP. It is neither of those. While those programs entail a high touch relationship between Microsoft and the participants, the technology preview is an unsupported release. This means that while customers can ask questions on the Microsoft Connect site forum, there is little dialog between Microsoft and the technology preview customers. It's simply a way for customers to have access to the early bits to help them plan and prepare for the next release.

I've been pretty quiet here lately. Mostly it's because I've been heads down on building the MDM team. I'm glad to say that the team is in high gear now. We're in full on development mode and have made substantial progress towards enhancing and augmenting what will become our offering in the next release of Office as well as long term planning for providing customers with substantial improvements upon what is available in market today.

With yesterday's announcement about the Zoomix acquisition, things are coming together nicely and it should be clear that Microsoft is serious about helping customers solve their master data challenges. We're also serious about building an MDM ecosystem and have been busy about building partnerships with multiple MDM vendors. These discussions are in progress so it wouldn't be appropriate to give details at this point, but if you're in the industry, you'd know these companies. We hope to be able to announce these partnership agreements in the coming months.If you are an ISV and are interested in our free training coming to a location near you, please let me know and I'll send you all the details.