Johannesburg, 27 Jan 2003
Business intelligence specialists Knowledge Integration Dynamics (KID) and Centerfield Software have formed a strategic alliance to bring a bundled data integration and business intelligence solution to the local market. KID is the local distributor for MicroStrategy, while CenterField recently secured the rights to Ascential Software distribution in SA.
MicroStrategy is one of the most successful online analytical processing solutions (OLAP) in the market, while Ascential`s DataStage is the leading extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) solution, with more than 35% local market share.
The alliance sees MicroStrategy and Ascential`s ETL solution, DataStage, bundled for local clients.
In terms of the alliance, which is non-exclusive, the two companies will collaborate closely to ensure clients have consistent metadata between back-end systems, such as leading ERP systems, their data warehouses and their OLAP solution of choice - MicroStrategy - and their presentation tool.
"We recently saw a promising data integration product disappear as an independent offering when Acta was acquired by Business Objects," says Aubrey van Aswegen, MD of KID. "One can easily understand why this deal was consummated: it was to drive consistent metadata between back-end applications, through the data staging area and the actual analytical tools."
The danger, for Acta, is that it loses its independence as a third-party tool which can tackle data from any source, or sources, and present it in a consistent format to any target, or number of targets.
"The alliance we have struck with Ascential on the one hand benefits both parties and ensures persistent metadata, while leaving both independent to pursue other partnerships, where they make sense."
"CenterField`s name implies that we function at the hub of other people`s activities," says Julian Field, MD of Centerfield Software, which was formed when Field acquired the local distribution rights from Ascential Software Corporation. "As an any-source-to-any-target vendor, we must remain independent, while providing integration for multiple partners, a vital imperative in today`s business world."
The partnership follows on a global agreement which operates in two functional areas: marketing and technical. At a technical level MicroStrategy will initially create SAP R/3-centric opportunities. Its analytical modules for SAP provide rapid deployment through pre-built reports and analyses on existing schemas, with the ability to add customised reports through application object reuse. Ascential provides pre-built data extractors, rapidly extracting data from SAP R/3, combining it with other data sources and creating business specific schemas.
"The SAP and follow-on market is highly active in SA and many companies that run R/3 are now looking at adding analytical and other value-enhancing functionality to their systems," says Field. The bundled offering is available to users of all other ERP and database systems. That is a consequence of the metadata collaboration between MicroStrategy and Ascential.
The integrated solution offers end-to-end enterprise metadata collaboration through metadata sharing among the industry`s most popular data modelling, data integration and business intelligence tools and standards.
The metadata-level collaboration has a number of benefits for clients, including cross-tool impact analysis that enables users to assess how changes in integration routines affect critical downstream reports, data lineage mapping that ensures users are sure of where the data originates and a publishing mechanism that pushes metadata standards and definitions to end-users, promoting understanding of critical business data.
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