Enterprise Data Management Council Established

A new Enterprise Data Management (EDM) Council has been established by over 20 representatives from corporate and investment banks, asset management companies, and competing industry vendors. The development has been led by GoldenSource, SunGard and IBM. The aim is to use the council as a forum to discuss the best practices for standardising and integrating reference and transaction data covering five categories: securities, customers, counterparties, transactions and positions, upon which compliance with regulatory requirements is heavily dependent. Dale Richards, president of enterprise data management at SunGard says that the agenda, and how any adoption of best practices might work have yet to be defined. But ideas such as creating a data management certification program have been discussed. The council is being differentiated from SunGard’s advisory board (RDR, Nov 2004), which is focused on managed or outsourced data services offerings, and RDUG or FISD’s efforts by its focus on actual vendor solutions. The first real meeting, following the confirmation of the agenda and members, is expected for October.