Innovative solution leverages customers' existing data warehouse investments; concept endorsed by Bill Inmon
Sagent, a leading provider of enterprise business intelligence solutions, has announced the availability of its Enterprise Information Integration (EII) package, an innovative solution for delivering dynamic analysis beyond the capabilities of an existing data warehouse.
Sagent's EII solution enables users to access, aggregate and analyse data from a wide variety of sources — including existing data warehouses, data marts, spreadsheets, and external data — without changing the existing data infrastructure.
Sagent's EII solution is based on Sagent's Data Flow technology, which provides a unique architecture for component-based information retrieval and analysis. Within the EII solution, data accessed from multiple sources flows in memory through analytic components, transforming the information at each step in the process and eliminating the need for storage of intermediate results in a database.
Data from unrelated applications and databases can be easily combined, allowing users to overcome the difficulties of incompatible data types and query languages. Results from an analysis are delivered directly to desktop applications such as spreadsheets and reporting tools. Sagent's EII solution enables companies to respond to unplanned user needs in a matter of hours.
"When analytic requirements surface that are not supported by the underlying data warehouse design, companies need a way to provide the right data for the analyses without disturbing the warehouse database structure," said Dave Henry, vice-president of product marketing at Sagent. "Sagent's EII solution gives companies an innovative and cost-effective way to extend the value of their warehouse while simultaneously managing it as a centralised corporate resource. This approach will save IT departments time and resources, and empower business users to make better informed decisions."
Sagent's approach to EII was recently added to Bill Inmon's eminent "Corporate Information Factory" architecture, under the name "adaptive project mart": a non-permanent data environment suitable for dynamic analysis. Inmon is an acknowledged thought-leader in the domain of business intelligence, and is widely known as "the father of data warehousing".
"After learning about Sagent's EII solution, I've added a new architectural entity to the Corporate Information Factory: the 'adaptive project mart,' said Inmon. "An adaptive project mart gives the corporation fast and flexible analytical capabilities that are not available through any other part of the corporate information factory. The adaptive project mart finally delivers on the promise of allowing end-users to have near-instantaneous and easy analytical capabilities. In addition, the adaptive project mart provides a degree of flexibility in analysis that is not possible elsewhere. With its new EII solution, Sagent is uniquely able to provide users with an adaptive project mart."
What has driven the development of EII is that the speed at which information is been made available to decision-makers is still not fast enough. In addition, requests for different types of information, delivered in different formats obtained from various sources are on the increase. Many organisations are finding it difficult to cope with the complexity and high demand for valuable information.
"Enterprise Information Integration means quick integrating of information on the fly," says Susan Andre, Managing Director of Sagent Technology SA. Sagent's Data Flow Server is the first data integration server designed from the outset to support the requirements of both ETL and EII. The solution allows business users and IT to collaborate on the development of custom analytic applications that address unanticipated opportunities and threats to an organisation. The rapid data integration processes enabled by EII allows IT to respond to urgent requests within hours and provide information that dramatically improves the quality of executive decisions. Furthermore, if the analysis proves to have lasting value, the data that supports it can be added to the warehouse via standard data integration processes.
"Sagent has become known for matching innovation with the demands of the market," says Andre. "With this approach, instead of having to overhaul existing systems or service one-off reporting requests, IT departments can provide their internal constituents with flexible yet robust analytic capabilities that meet their evolutionary needs. This is a powerful value proposition that is unique in the market."
The product is available in the South African market from September.
Sagent
Sagent is a leading global provider of data warehouse and enterprise business intelligence solutions. Sagent's suite of enterprise business intelligence solutions enables companies to measurably impact their business by implementing highly successful customer relationship and financial management initiatives.
Through Sagent's powerful enabling technologies, organisations can easily and rapidly turn company data into relevant information that can be used for effective decision-making, analysis and reporting. Information can be extracted from \multiple sources (internal and external), optimised for decision support and delivered in a customised format for Web-based or client applications.
More than 1 500 companies have selected Sagent software to enhance customer retention, cross-sell/up-sell, improve customer service, increase efficiencies of marketing campaigns, streamline business operations, analyse financials and reduce costs.
Customers include Siemens, Telkom, Credit Guarantee and Gensec, AT&T, BP Amoco, Boeing Employees Credit Union, Bristol Meyers, British Telecom, California State Automobile Association, Citibank, GPU Energy, Kinecta Federal Credit Union, Johnson & Johnson (UK), Kemper National Insurance, Provident Central Credit Union and Safeway.