Event Summary
"WESTBORO, Mass., November 29, 1999 - Ardent Software, Inc. (Nasdaq: ARDT),
a leading global data management software company, today announced a strategic
partnership with Firstlogic, Inc., the developer of i.d.Centric data quality
software that helps companies cleanse and consolidate data in database marketing,
data warehousing, and e-business applications. Under the partnership agreement
Firstlogic will develop and support a link between its industry-leading customer
data quality tools and Ardent's DataStage Suite."
"Organizations
implementing complex database marketing programs and e-business strategies depend
on extensive data quality assurance. Together Ardent and Firstlogic are meeting
this market need," said Mikael Wipperfeld, vice president of data warehouse
marketing at Ardent Software. "This partnership allows our joint customers to
take advantage of Firstogic's address verification, name parsing and extensive
matching and consolidation capabilities inside the DataStage suite, the most
comprehensive Business Intelligence (BI) Infrastructure solution available."
"As
data has become increasingly strategic to corporate growth, monitoring and maintaining
the highest level of data quality are essential," said Art Petty, Firstlogic
vice president of marketing. "Our customer data cleansing and matching tools
work with Ardent's DataStage Quality Assurance solutions to provide powerful,
complete data quality management." .
Market
Impact
As we predicted in "Data
Warehouse Vendors Moving Towards Application Suites" (September 29, 1999),
and "Oracle
Buys Carleton Corporation to Enhance Warehouse Offering" (November 10, 1999),
the data cleansing tool vendors continue to be acquired or partnered with. We
predict this trend will continue as Ardent now has very strong data cleansing
capabilities. They already had cleansing software acquired with the purchase
of Prism Solutions. Prism had previously purchased QDB Solutions, which created
QDB/Analyze, a tool for complex data cleansing, and this partnership will give
them additional capabilities.
User
Recommendations
We recommend that customers building warehouses from legacy data, which is typically
"dirty" or non-conformed, evaluate the solution provided by Ardent. The vendor
should be questioned on how tightly the products will be integrated.