Event
Summary
During September,
two more data warehousing vendors announced product suites that they claim offer
broader integration between business intelligence, data movement, data cleansing
and metadata management. BI vendor Cognos (NASDAQ: COGN) announced "Cognos platform",
a tool to build complete "BI-ready data infrastructures". Data Movement vendor
Ardent Software (NASDAQ: ARDT) announced "DataStage XE", which is designed to
"simplify integration of multiple data sources and business intelligence tools".
"Cognos
platform"
Cognos claims
their new product is an "end-to-end platform, the first solution for building,
managing and deploying BI solutions for enterprise and e-business needs" which
"includes enterprise infrastructure layers that cover data mart building, integrated
meta data modeling, and integrated security" as well as content management and
distribution.
The product
is a suite that contains:
-
Extract/Transform/Load capabilities for populating data
marts. This technology was acquired with the purchase of U.K. based Relational
Matters, which created the DecisionStream product, "the first OLAP-aware
data integration product". DecisionStream is an ETL tool capable of populating
OLAP hypercubes, such as the one used by Cognos PowerPlay.
-
Metadata management capabilities to provide centralized
metadata and business rules. All applications in the suite share a common
meta model.
-
Business intelligence tools in the form of Cognos PowerPlay
and Impromptu. These products have made Cognos one of the top three business
intelligence vendors.
-
Additional services such as data mart modeling and common
security functions.
Ardent "DataStage
XE"
Ardent has
acquired a number of other software vendors in the last year, and is attempting
to integrate the purchased technologies into their existing DataStage 3.6 product.
Like Cognos, they are offering a suite that, in addition to providing data movement
capabilities, offers metadata management and data quality management to "simplify
integration of multiple data sources and business intelligence tools".
The product
is a suite that contains:
-
Extract/Transform/Load capabilities in the form of DataStage
3.6. This product has made Ardent one of the top three ETL vendors.
-
Metadata management technology acquired with the purchase
of Dovetail Software. This is a proprietary meta model, Ardent promises
an XML-compliant repository in a future release. (For further details on
metadata repository standards, see News Analysis "Is
There Finally a Metadata Exchange Standard on the Horizon?" September
28, 1999).
-
Data quality technologies acquired with the purchase of
Prism Solutions. Prism had previously purchased QDB Solutions, which created
QDB/Analyze, a tool for complex data cleansing.
-
Improved mainframe functionality, also acquired with the
purchase of Prism Solutions. Prism's mainframe based ETL tool provides Ardent
with mainframe job scheduling and improved access to legacy data sources.
Market
Impact
Data warehouse
vendors are flocking to the suite concept. Ardent and Cognos have joined the
ranks of larger vendors, such as Microsoft (with SQL Server 7.0) and Computer
Associates (with DecisionBase 1.9), in attempting to provide end-to-end data
warehousing solutions. Customers and prospects have been complaining for years
about how hard it is to integrate ETL and BI tools into a functional whole that
includes integrated metadata management. We believe that a truly integrated
product would be a better solution than a suite, but suites are a step in the
right direction. Users want "one stop shopping" with the ability to procure
from a single vendor.
The current
market direction indicates that more vendors will merge or be acquired as the
larger players in the data warehousing space attempt to buy technology and fill
in holes in their product offerings.
-
Ardent is the only ETL vendor that possesses a data cleansing
tool, so we expect that data cleansing vendors such as Vality and Trillium
will be targets for other ETL vendors. We believe the company most at risk
is Carleton, which acquired data cleansing vendor Apertus in October of
1997. Carleton's (NASDAQ:CARL) stock price was recently at $1.75, and they
recently had to secure a working capital line of credit with Silicon Valley
Bank.
-
Cognos includes a complete BI solution with their product.
Ardent has no business intelligence offering in the DataStage suite. However,
Ardent has partnered with Business Objects in the U.K to provide a more
complete solution in Europe. We expect to see this partnership extended
to North America.
-
Neither vendor has adhered to the XML standard in their
metadata repository. Both Ardent and Cognos will have to address this issue.
-
Ardent now has stronger mainframe capabilities because
of the Prism acquisition, and already had a market-leading ETL tool. Cognos
will have to prove the strength of its ETL solution and ensure that the
tool can extract legacy data.
User
Recommendations
Suites are
typically a vendor's attempt to integrate existing technologies, either their
own or acquired ones. We recommend that users ensure that the vendor's integration
effort has been successful and is not simply packaging. Seamless integration
of software products takes time.
Potential integration
issues:
Each suite
is missing components, therefore, users should determine which components they
need for their particular application.
-
If data cleansing is not an issue for the customer, then
Cognos' lack of this capability should not be an issue.
-
The fact that Ardent does not supply a business intelligence
tool can be rectified by the purchase of one from another vendor. However,
users must be aware that Ardent's metadata repository is proprietary, and
any BI tool purchased will not be able to access it without customization.
As a complete
end-to-end solution, Cognos has the better offering of these two, but all of
the available suites on the market should be evaluated in their entirety before
a purchase decision is made. Depending on the particular needs of the company,
the different strengths of the vendors will influence the decision.