According to current user ratings tracked by Evalubase Research, the overall experience with metadata management and repository solutions is somewhat mediocre compared to data management solutions on average.

View Metadata Category Ratings
View Data Management Category Ratings

All but one metadata product sub-rating are 1-9 points (out of 100) lower than data management solutions overall. Only the maintainability score for metadata products outshines data management solutions (e.g. data integration, data administration, DBMS, content management).

In particular, users find the functionality, efficiency, reliability, compatibility, portability, usability, security lacking compared to their experiences with other data management products. They also express that their level of satisfaction with the product and the product's ultimate value lower than with the rest of their data management portfolio.

The biggest relative difference is found in usability. IT professionals give their data management solutions overall a solid 73/100, whereas metadata solutions usability scores a mere 64.

Interestingly, maintainability (73) is the strongest characteristic of metadata solutions, but the usability (64) is the weakest characteristic (other than portability). This would indicate that metadata solutions embody sufficient flexibility to accommodate user needs, but often fall short in user interface features.

Certainly metadata vendors need to focus more on a bit of sex and sizzle, and consider (as the market demands) enabling their Windows-only wares on another platform or two. But could these lesser experiences indicate that IT organizations should expect to require outside consulting or additional staff to implement metadata solutions effectively? In a future entry, we'll look into metadata staffing trends.

Just telling IT like it is,
Doug