Well folks, it had to happen. Earlier this evening Microsoft announced it had entered the MDM market with the acquisition of Stratature, a private MDM company based in Georgia USA. Although Microsoft is late into this market I am sure this is the opening play from our friends in Redmond Washington. I assume Microsoft will integrate Stratature with Microsoft SQL Server, Business Intelligence, PerformancePoint and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server to offer a co-ordinated MDM solution. I think for sure the master data definitions in any Microsoft MDM solution will end up in the SharePoint Business Data Catalog (BDC) as a way to get at master data from applications running on top of the SharePoint Server (e.g. Office). I have always felt that BDC on its own without common data definitions (which would be possible with MDM) means that users have to know the different data definitions for the same thing to clearly understand what they see via the portal or via Office applications. It was only a matter of time before Microsoft made a move into MDM. Now that it has happened we now have all four software giants (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP) in this market along with best of breed independents. So let the battle begin.