What this book presents is a culmination of years of experience in projects and programs associated with master data management tools, techniques, processes, and people. A number of people were key contributors to the development of this book, and I take this opportunity to thank them for their support:

First of all, my wonderful wife, Jill, deserves the most credit for perseverance and for her encouragement in completing the book. I also must thank my children, Kira, Jonah, Brianna, Gabriella, and Emma, for their help as well.

Critical parts of this book were inspired by works that I was commissioned to assemble for DataFlux, as well as other vendors in the MDM tool space, including Identity Systems, Informatica, Initiate Systems, Siperian, Pervasive, Business Objects, Zoomix, Exeros, and Silver Creek Systems.

Folks at DataFlux provided a significant amount of input during the process: Tony Fisher (president of DataFlux), along with many key team members including Katie Fabiszak, Daniel Teachey, James Goodfellow, and Deb Procopio.

Marty Moseley, the chief technology officer at Initiate Systems, provided detailed comments to help solidify the material.

Ron Powell, Shawn Rogers, Jean Schauer, and Mary Jo Nott (to name only a few) have provided me with an excellent forum for brainstorming ideas and developing material with the data management community through the Businesss Intelligence Network (www.b-eye-network.com).

Bonnie O'Neil, coauthor of a great book called Business Metadata, was able to turn on a dime and quickly provided input as well as technical oversight.

Richard Ordowich, one of the principal consultants from Knowledge Integrity, acted as a springboard and provided critical comments too.

Colin White provided some valuable insights regarding master data services.

Cliff Longman, the chief technology officer of Kalido, reviewed the topics covered in the book and provided insight to its completeness.

Todd Goldman and Denise Sparks from Exeros, through the creation of MDM University (www.mdmuniversity.com), provided an additional outlet for validating material.

Jim Jarvie from Informatica provided valuable feedback regarding the use of identity- resolution techniques.

Thanks to Wilshire Conferences, presenters of the annual DAMA/Meta-Data and Data Governance conferences, The Data Warehousing Institute, and DebTech International for allowing me to develop courseware supporting the concepts in this book.

Thanks to Laura Quinter, who helped assemble the material into its final form.

I thank Mary James from Elsevier for proactively managing my progress along the way, and editor Denise Penrose who has effectively driven me to put together what I hope is perceived to be a high-quality guidebook to inform and direct practitioners and managers across the business information management community. I also want to thank Diane Cerra for her support and encouragement in getting this project started.

Most of all, I want to thank our customers, for it is that community that has trained us in what we know.