Blog: David Loshin

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June 30, 2008

Composite Discovery and Structured Search

Next up at IAP: Composite Software, introducing a combination of a search capability and the use of a relatively sophisticated approach to profiling across federated data in order to present a portal for searching though collections of data and prioritizing views that can be materialized in real time. Noted expert Clive Finkelstein commented on the similarity with what used to be the Axio product from Evoke (now part of Informatica), but the interesting part is their use of the relationship discovery purely for searching.

Also: the product is an "appliance," meaning that it is packaged software on top of hardware. No details of the hardware were presented, but it probably uses a number of multi-core CPUs with a lot of memory (how else could they do the analysis?).

Seems like an extremely interesting product, especially in the context of supporting e-discovery.

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My Way or the iWay? More from the IAP

The second set of presentations at the Independent Analyst Platform was by Kevin Quinn and Vincent Lam, representing Information Builders and iWay Software, an owned subsidiary of Information Builders. Kevin's presentation screamed through the extremely versatile organization and presentation of reporting, analysis, and some of the ways that Information Builders' product landscape feeds into an organizational business productivity and improvement activity. Reliance on data integration that has evolved over 30+ years from within lends a degree of credibility to the claims of pervasiveness and scalability.

Vincent's presentation on iWay spanned the capability spectrum of numerous abilities for data integration. One interesting note: many other BI vendors have recognized the need for a data integration (or ETL) capability, then went out and bought a vendor or two to fill that void, then wriggled and writhed through the process of making the purchased tools work together. Information Builders has grown their own internal data integration suite, which obviates that need to make things work together, and that is an extremely appealing notion.

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Business Objects and SAP - Easing Toward Intergation?

I am at the IAP, Independent Analyst Platform, in sunny (and hot) Phoenix AZ, and the first set of presentations came from folks at Business Objects, an SAP company. I mention it this way since it seemed pretty clear that the presenters were coming from the BOBJ point of view, looking at where Business Objects fits into the SAP strategy.

One thing that looks clear: the objective in maintaining Business Objects as a separate division focusing on being "open and agnostic" as to the platforms to be supported (aside from SAP) may allay fears of existing customers of being forced into the newly created "mega-stack."

I do wonder, though, about the extent to which there is cross-pollination between the product suites of SAP and Business Objects; there may be some nice chunks in NetWeaver that could be siphoned off and offered as part of a Business Objects Enterprise Information Management suite.

Another interesting point with respect to MDM: Aaron Mahimainathan, who is the Senior Director, Platform Marketing SAP, did admit the challenges in synchronizing master data between the BI environment and the operational SAP applications.

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June 6, 2008

Microsoft to Purchase Zoomix?

Just heard through the rumor mill that Microsoft is "thinking about acquiring Zoomix." It would make sense that Microsoft might consider bulking up in its capability to support a potential MDM offering (note last year's acquisition of Stratature). I would look forward to seeing something official, though...

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