Acknowledgments

First, I want to thank my friend and coauthor Larry Dubov for his knowledge, persistence, and dedication, without which this book would not have happened. Both Larry and I have formal scientific, academic background in mathematics, physics and computer science, and for this edition we unanimously decided to leverage this combined body of knowledge and introduce several concepts that are based on sound scientific principles such as the concept of information entropy for measuring information quality. We had a lot of fun writing these chapters and hope that this rewarding teamwork experience will drive our exploration of MDM and Master Data Governance into new depths in the near future.

I want to thank Aaron Zornes, founder and Chief Research Officer of The MDM Institute, for his kind words of encouragement, great quotes, support and help, and Rob Karol of Forrster Research for his insightful comments and advice. Both Aaron and Rob were kind enough to review the entire manuscript in detail and write the book’s two Forewords, and I’m very grateful to have received their endorsements.

Very special thanks to my many friends and colleagues who I’ve worked with over the years, and who keep defining new challenges in and the vision of information management technology and, in particular, Master Data Management and Master data Governance. In particular, I want to express my gratitude to Gene Fernandez, my friend and colleague for many years, for his vision, energy, and continuous support. I also have to offer special thanks to Guy Chiarello, Adrian Kunzle, Mike Urciuoli, Craig Goulding, Ian Miller, Sachin Sangtani, Joe Rabbia, John Tabback, Steve Tsao, Mark Gaylord, David Laurance, Kevin Tyson, Dan Zinkin, Paul Yaron, Vince Feingold, Spencer Fine, Mark Appel, Buzz Moschetti, Peter Cherasia, Rich Burger, and many others for their continuous support and for giving me an opportunity to learn and work in a very stimulating and challenging environment on the leading edge of information technology.

I truly appreciate the opportunity to work with my friends Bernard Plagman and Charles Popper at TechPar Group, and to learn from their wisdom and lifelong experiences.

I also would like to express gratitude and appreciation to my numerous friends and colleagues at IBM, Merrill Lynch, Entrust, CitiGroup, The MDM Institute, Vertica, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Trident Capital, and many other organizations that inspired me to write this book and helped with their knowledge, vision, optimism, perseverance, and invaluable insights. I want to specifically thank Michael Stonebraker, Peter Meekin, Alberto Yepez, David Ketsdever, Kris Bryant, Shanker Ramamurthy, Joe Hollander, Larry Caminiti, and my life-long friends Yakov and Lilia Tsalalikhin.

I would like to thank all those who have helped with clarifications, criticism, and valuable information during the writing of this book, and were patient enough to read the entire manuscript and make many useful suggestions. Special thanks and gratitude go to Bernard Plagman, Paul Raskas, and Jonathan Harris for their insightful edits. And I truly appreciate the reviews, valuable insights, advice, and quotes kindly provided by Steve Adler, Malcolm Chisholm, David Loshin, Marty Moseley, Len Silverston, and Robert Hillard

And, of course, we would have never finished this book without the invaluable assistance and thoroughness of McGraw-Hill’s Lisa McClain, Meghan Riley, Patty Mon, and Bart Reed, and the great team from Glyph International led by Vasundhara Sawhney.

Finally, the key reason for writing this book is my family. My very special thanks to my wife Irina, my son Vlad and his wife Tara, my daughter Michelle, my grandchildren Colin Alexander, and Anna Valentina, who became an added inspiration for writing this book, my mother, and my mother- and father-in-law, who recently passed away and will always be loved and remembered. Thank you all for giving me time to complete the book and never-ending optimism, support, and love, and for understanding the book’s importance.

—Alex Berson

I am grateful to my coauthor Alex Berson for the idea of writing this book and his enthusiasm that we could pull this book off despite the workloads we both have on our day jobs. It was a great pleasure working with Alex on summarizing our experiences, formulating the ideas, and reconciling our views. The views, sometimes different on the surface, were usually very similar when discussions were taken to the right depth. My work and discussions with Alex helped me a lot in deepening, summarizing, and systematizing my views on Master Data Management and Data Governance, their trends, and some key financial industry aspects around integration and synergies between MDM, data governance, and data warehousing.

Special thanks to Aaron Zornes, Chief Research Officer at The MDM Institute for his book review, the foreword and favorable quotes that reflect Aaron’s enthusiasm and great insights into MDM and data governance.

I am thankful to Rob Karel, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, for his support, book review, and discussions. I highly appreciate the book reviews, valuable insights, suggestions, and quotes provided by Steve Adler, Malcolm Chisholm, David Loshin, Marty Moseley, Len Silverston, and Robert Hillard. Special thanks to Marty—I have learned a lot partnering with him at Initiate Business Management Consulting.

I highly appreciate the work done by the technical editors of this book, Paul Raskas, Bernard Plagman, and Jonathan Harris, for their great comments and suggestions, which helped us improve the readability and overall quality of this book.

I would like to express my special gratitude to my friend and colleague Paul Raskas for helpful discussions on MDM-related topics and for partnership on a number of projects. Discussions with Paul, especially on the topics of Master Data Modeling and Data Governance were very fruitful.

I am thankful to Initiate Executive Management, Bill Conroy, Jeff Galowich, Jim Cushman, and Gina Sandon for their support of the idea of this book.

Special thanks to Dr. Scott Schumacher for fruitful discussions on the applications of Information Theory to data quality and some illustrative materials used in the book.

My knowledge of the Master Data Management and data governance comes mainly from practical project implementations, and everyday work with my clients and colleagues. Therefore, many people who worked with me on MDM including implementation, sales, marketing, and product development contributed indirectly to this book. Many of my colleagues at Initiate contributed to the content of this book indirectly through numerous discussions of practical MDM and data governance problems, solution options and approaches. Special thanks to Jim Cushman, Jon Case, Alex Eastman, Upwan Chachra, and Bill Dorner.

Articulating MDM and Data Governance values and problem domains to different audiences is very challenging. We often face this type of challenges in sales cycles. I learned a lot from my MDM sales colleagues at Initiate and IBM. Among them Greg Shaw, Angela Losacco, Irene Nathan, Paul Schmerold, Neil Day, Linda Crump, Louis Hausle, Michael Fasciano, and Odilio Abreu. I am thankful to Crysta Anderson for her great work in assisting me with a number of blogs covering a few book topics.

I highly appreciate the work performed by the teams McGraw-Hill that helped us with the publishing lifecycle, which includes a broad range of activities from support for the book proposal to editing, art design, marketing, and other critical activities required to bring this book to the market. Among these individuals my special thanks to Lisa McClain, Meghan Riley, Vasundhara Sawhney, Bart Reed, Patty Mon, Bettina Faltermeier, and Karen Schopp.

I am very thankful to my wife Irene, as she inspired me to write this book, my son Anthony, and my daughter Anastasia for their encouragement and patience since this book took a lot of my time from the family. Indeed the book was written over the weekends and on vacation. I am also grateful to my mother and mother-in-law, and my sister Julia and her family for their encouragement and interest in this book.

—Larry Dubov