Features - Storage Innovations:

FIRSTLOGIC INTRODUCES NEXT-GENERATION DATA QUALITY PLATFORM

Firstlogic Inc, a global provider of enterprise information quality solutions, introduced IQ8 Integration Studio, a comprehensive data quality integration environment for designing, deploying and managing data quality solutions. The announcement was made at The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) World Conference, which is currently taking place in Boston.

IQ8 Integration Studio was designed and developed to the specific needs of systems integrators, value-added-resellers and corporate IT engineers chartered to build data quality into enterprise systems or custom-built technologies. It enables centralized data quality management within the context of an enterprise architecture by facilitating the transition from multi-instance, project-based deployment to single-instance enterprise deployment.

IQ8 Integration Studio enables users to quickly build and reuse business rules across the enterprise through an intuitive user interface and quick start "best practice" Data Quality Blueprints. It extends data quality capabilities by including data and functionality of third party or proprietary applications. IQ8 Integration Studio enables both transactional (single-record processing) and batch (multiple-record processing) environments to be integrated with Firstlogic's data quality solution. A key component is a Web services interface (API) as the means of integration. The growing adoption of Web services will make it easier to integrate, deploy and maintain data quality throughout the enterprise.

"IQ8 Integration Studio incorporates and leverages more than 20 years of data quality expertise and revolutionizes the delivery of enterprise-wide and project-based data quality regardless of environment, architecture or deployment, providing consistent, reliable and verifiable results," said Art Petty, Firstlogic vice president of marketing. "IQ8 greatly reduces overall total cost of ownership and improves return on investment due to its quick integration and ease of maintenance. In addition, IQ8's ease of use reinforces our commitment to bring data quality practices to mainstream business users."

According to Ted Friedman, principal analyst at Gartner Inc: "Data quality improvement initiatives often focus on tactical solutions to obvious data quality problems. While it is admirable that organizations are attempting to address their data quality issues, such narrowly scoped initiatives generally fail to achieve long-term data quality improvement on a broad scale. In contrast, enterprises that take a holistic approach to data quality improvement –- addressing organizational, cultural, process and technology infrastructure –- can reap dramatic benefits."

MarketTouch, a Georgia-based provider of data and analytical solutions for the direct marketing industry, is one of the beta test sites for IQ8 Integration Studio. MarketTouch's Real America Database (RADB) –- a 6TB national database running on Oracle 8i, contains over 200 million individuals and 93 million households, and is currently updated with more than 20 million records monthly.

According to J. Wadsworth, MarketTouch's director of database systems, MarketTouch has been using IQ8 Integration Studio to set up workflow projects to run large data sets. "Our early experiences with IQ8 Integration Studio have been very favorable," Wadsworth said. "We are very impressed with the user interface and the robustness of the software in setting up projects. It is enabling us quickly build and share business rules across our distributed enterprise where we have multiple data sources and formats we have to contend with."

Firstlogic's IQ8 Integration Studio features the industry's first comprehensive data quality component architecture including:

• The IQ8 Repository: The Repository contains two major subcomponents: configuration rules and runtime metadata. Configuration rules are items such as transforms, compound transforms and projects. These are configured to explain the business rules needed for data quality processing. Runtime metadata includes a variety of information about the different processes run in IQ8.
• The IQ8 Data Quality Server: The IQ8 Data Quality Server powers all the processing performed by IQ8 Integration Studio. It processes batch projects launched from the Web service, as well as the transactional data passed to it via the Web service. Additionally, the IQ8 Repository stores all of the dataflows and other objects that define the rules for the processing by the IQ8 Server.
• The IQ8 Project Architect: The Project Architect is the graphical application used to design the dataflows that tell the IQ8 Server how to process data. The Project Architect includes the Dataflow Designer, a point-and-click interface that sets up a dataflow graphically. Users can choose from a number of predefined transforms, or they can create their own.
• The IQ8 Web service: The IQ8 Web service is the mechanism used to send and receive data between an application and the IQ8 Server. Data can be processed on a transactional basis from a custom application, or with the Web service, batch dataflows can be launched, including from a remote location via the Web administration application or the user's custom application. The Web service also includes Web methods that can be used to monitor the status of any dataflows in the IQ8 repository.

"IQ8 Integration Studio adds to Firstlogic's market-leading expertise in delivering high-value data quality solutions to the marketplace," said Firstlogic Vice President of Development Joe Zurawski. "It addresses the major concerns that our customers and prospects face when they integrate our technology into enterprise systems or custom technologies, namely total cost of ownership, scalability, extensibility, reliability and ease of use."