Governmental regulations and big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target are driving the trend toward master data product hubs, which aim to create a single repository for all product-related information no matter what system or department within an organization is generating the data.

Aiding this effort, Oracle this week unveiled the Oracle PIM (Product Information Management) Data Hub, which follows similar announcements from IBM and SAP made at the end of last year.

Oracle"s product hub will give users a common and single view of their products.

"The whole idea is to manage the product information regardless of where it sits," Webb said.

Other features include the ability to add customized attributes to products, conduct parametric searches, and create change-driven workflows.

Parametric searches allow an engineering department to put in dozens of attributes when sourcing a product to ensure the product does not already exist in-house.

The PIM Data Hub performs the typical ETL (extraction, transformation, and loading) of a data warehouse but is designed as a management tool rather than as an analysis tool.

When an item is created in the PIM Data Hub, the system syndicates it down to the individual systems, Webb said.

"This gives you both control and standardization," Webb said.

IBM, Oracle, and SAP are counting on the enterprise"s need to comply with new governmental environmental regulations from here and abroad such as RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) and WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment). These regulations will most likely force companies to look for better product lifecycle management tools than what is currently available within their legacy systems.

RoHS restricts the import into most European countries of any products that contain any one of seven toxic substances. Lead solder being one of those substances, RoHS has already forced PC manufacturers such as Dell to retool their plants in order to use other types of solder material.

WEEE puts the responsibility of disposing of products at the end of their lifecycle in the manufacturer"s lap, even if it is years after the final sale.

These requirements mean companies not only need to track the components of their products but also must have a single or master definition of what"s inside each product.

Today most enterprises have multiple systems in place, noted John Webb, vice president of application strategy at Oracle. Each system is typically run by a different part of the organization and each may have a different description for the same product.

SAP released its Master Data Management and Master Event Management solutions at about the same time IBM released WebSphere Product Center and WebSphere Commerce in December. These products will also aid the enterprise in response to governmental regulations but, even more so, they"re meant to comply with requirements from the likes of Wal-Mart and Target. The big-box retailers require that all product information be sent to them electronically. In order to gain control over product information to comply, the software category now being called PIM was created.

Although the effort to implement a single product data repository will be a challenge for IT, according to Joshua Greenbaum, a principal analyst at Enterprise Applications Consulting, the enterprise has little choice.

"With the immense complexity of retail product attributes based on everything from price to quantity, package size, and even selling region, PIM is an absolute imperative," Greenbaum said.

According to Dan Druker, director of product information management at IBM, PIM is crucial to the next wave of commerce technologies such as RFID.

If all product data is in a single repository, as the product moves across the supply chain all of the supply chain owners will know what the products are, where they are stored, how they should be stored and for how long, as well as expected and actual delivery date.

With that kind of data available, manufacturers and trading partners can make more informed decision about their products.

"All of that information has to be managed to get the value out of it for the retailers and their trading partners," Druker said.

According to Greenbaum, no matter whose solution a company picks -- IBM, Oracle, or SAP, among others -- IT is not going to have an easier or harder task based on the platform.

If a company uses the IBM solution, acquired through IBM"s purchase last year of Trego technology, the functionality will be more custom-built than packaged, Greenbaum said.

"Oracle and SAP are saying they are going to be packaged solutions which potentially will be a lot more cost-effective," Greenbaum said.

The Oracle announcement is hard on the heels of its acquisition of Retek, a designer of retail management software.

"Retek is at the point of delivery and the product hub is about the back office," Greenbaum said.

Oracle"s PIM Data Hub is shipping now.