Data integration takes shape

The data integration (DI) market is benefiting from the technologies and critical mass of two previously separate areas, making for a "good size business" for its incumbents, says Julian Field, MD of CenterField Software, the SA distributor for Ascential Software.

Field says CenterField makes one sale a month of a DI product called Ascential DataStage. The entry point is around R500 000, accounting for the "several millions of rands in turnover" that the company clocks up per year. Field says DI is a little known area which nevertheless attracts specialised skills, but has widespread presence, given the drive to integrate, consolidate and "sweat assets".

The two areas converging on each other, he adds, are ETL (extraction, transformation and loading of data) and EAI (enterprise application integration). Field says the DI market is composed of data integrity, bulk transportation, profiling (the hardest task) and integration.

"Both camps have claimed they could do the work of the other," he says, "but it is not until six to eight months ago that a coherent, convergent market has emerged."

The market entrants, alliances and degree of technology sharing provides further insight, he says, into the immaturity of this market, but also of the eagerness of most data-centric vendors to offer it.

Ascential dates back to a company called Ardent, bought by Informix and split out into its database business and a company called Ascential. IBM bought the former. CenterField was first known as Ascential SA, but a management buyout resulted in it becoming the local distributor.

A small company, CenterField makes use of a partnership model, claiming good integration skills, Field says. It distributes to partners including Comparex and Sybase. It also has skills in technologies of other vendors in Ascential`s space, such as Embarcadero, Informatica, Oracle and PathFinder - an EDI (electronic data interchange product). Its other competitors include Business Objects (Acta) and Microsoft DTS (provided free of charge with SQL Server).

"We provide the plumbing behind applications like business intelligence and financials," he adds. "Whereas ETL, which started in the data warehousing space, can be likened to a dump truck, loading a lot of data at once onto a different system, EAI is like many Mini Coopers running to and fro as required.

"As with EAI, data integration takes data from the source (databases, applications, devices) and integrates it into a reusable architecture for data consistency."

Ascential got its transport, profiling, integrity and integration competencies from acquisitions, respectively of Torrent, Metagenics, Vality and Mercator. The Ascential offering "sits" at the centre of the systems architecture, linking directly to all data sources through middleware like BEA Weblogic, Mercator or WebSphere MQ, and storing them in reusable format for all information requests.

It provides a structured way of integrating data, rather than the more disorganised middle-tier of old-style application integration, and provides four-way functionality, he says.