The Real Side of MMS
Okay, that's enough of that. Let's take a real-life look at what MMS does. Yes, the consultant is right; it is yet another information store, but it is even more than that.
MMS allows you to bring disparate information from different stores together, and replicate that information around the enterprise. How? Let's go back to our previous example of the Exchange, AD, and PeopleSoft systems.
When you build the interfaces from MMS to these systems, you actually import the data (or designated parts of it) and then "push" the information out to other stores. For example, it makes the most sense to import employees' email address information from the Exchange server and then push the employees' email addresses out to the intranet/extranet.
By taking the information from Exchange, you specify that the Exchange server is the owner of the information (in this case, the email address), and every subscribing system is only the receiver of the information.
What does this mean to the users? For one thing, they never have to update their email addresses again (in all secondary data stores); and basic information, such as their phone numbers, addresses, and so on are replicated around the enterprise by the system that actually owns the information. Now that is pretty cool, isn't it?