For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Trends In Data Quality  (582 KB PPT)

by Rob Karel, October 23, 2009

This set of data charts will examine key trends in data quality gleaned from Forrester's August 2009 Global Master Data Management/Data Quality Online Survey.

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Warning: Don't Assume Your Business Processes Use Master Data

Synchronize Your Business Process And Master Data Strategies

by Rob Karel, Clay Richardson, September 21, 2009

Business process management (BPM) professionals understand the need for data but often only pay it lip service, doing little to take responsibility for ensuring data quality within their processes. Data management professionals, on the other hand, drive . . .

For Enterprise Architecture Professionals

2009 Update: Evaluating Integration Alternatives

Scenario-Based Guidance For Choosing Products That Provide Application, Process, And Data Integration Features

by Ken Vollmer, Rob Karel, Larry Fulton, Noel Yuhanna, January 26, 2009

Technical innovation and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity continue to drive the evolution of the integration marketplace, leading to a market with a significantly different array of features and tools than what existed just 18 months ago. In . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

Winning In A Unique Technology Niche

Succeeding With A Consistent, Targeted Business Model

by Merv Adrian, Rob Karel, December 11, 2007

Many technology industry firms squander the opportunity to craft a go-to-market strategy that leverages truly differentiated technology, target markets, and business models. A careful examination of these should drive practices for customer acquisition, . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Market Overview: Open Source ETL Tools

An Attractive Alternative To Custom Code

by Rob Karel, Michael Goulde, November 6, 2007

As open source, community-driven software continues its evolution from an interesting experiment to a viable technology alternative for enterprises, additional market segments develop open-source alternatives. The latest segment in the trend is open source . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Ab Initio: Get To Know High-End Transaction Processing's Mysterious Leader

by Rob Karel, Merv Adrian, November 5, 2007

Enterprise architects and information managers often have to face very high value information management, performance, complexity, and scalability challenges. Only some find technology solutions that can tackle these challenges, but Ab Initio is a vendor . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

SAS Institute: A Strong Performer In Enterprise ETL With A BI And Analytics Focus

The Forrester Wave™ Vendor Summary, Q2 2007

by Rob Karel, May 2, 2007

SAS Institute's Data Integration Studio (SDIS) remains a Strong Performer with good server capabilities, strong connectivity, user-friendly tools, and a world-class support and training organization. SAS ETL adoption remains primarily within its SAS business . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Oracle Is A Leader In Enterprise ETL With A Free, Bundled Solution For Its DBMS

The Forrester Wave™ Vendor Summary, Q2 2007

by Rob Karel, May 2, 2007

With the long awaited "Paris" release of Oracle Warehouse Builder 10gR2 (OWB) finally available, Oracle has delivered a scaleable, user-friendly, and feature-rich ETL solution at a much more attractive price than its competitors: Free! Base OWB functionality . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Sybase Enters The Enterprise ETL Market As A Contender

The Forrester Wave™ Vendor Summary, Q2 2007

by Rob Karel, May 2, 2007

Sybase's Sybase ETL product can be a useful project- or departmental-based ETL tool for easy to moderate integration challenges as an alternative to custom code. But the product does not yet offer the necessary scalability, connectivity, user friendliness, . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Pervasive Software: A Strong Performer In Enterprise ETL Targeted At ISVs And Integrators

The Forrester Wave™ Vendor Summary, Q2 2007

by Rob Karel, May 2, 2007

Pervasive Software's Business Integrator Pro and Data Integrator products do not compete head to head on scalability, user friendliness, and feature richness compared with most of the other enterprise ETL vendors we evaluated, but that is in line with . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Microsoft Is A Strong Performer In Enterprise ETL When Targeting Microsoft Shops

The Forrester Wave™ Vendor Summary, Q2 2007

by Rob Karel, May 2, 2007

With the release of SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (SSIS), Microsoft has significantly improved on its previous Data Transformation Services (DTS) ETL offering as a valuable data integration tool for homogeneous Microsoft platform customers. While . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Business Objects: A Leader In Enterprise ETL, With A Strong Focus On Information Management

The Forrester Wave™ Vendor Summary, Q2 2007

by Rob Karel, May 2, 2007

Business Objects' Data Integrator is a relatively affordable enterprise-class ETL solution that incorporates comprehensive information management capabilities — further enhanced by its acquisition of data quality management vendor Firstlogic. Data Integrator . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

iWay Software Is A Strong Performer In Enterprise ETL With Broad Connectivity

The Forrester Wave™ Vendor Summary, Q2 2007

by Rob Karel, May 2, 2007

iWay Software, a subsidiary of Information Builders, is best known for its world-class information connectivity and also leads all vendors in its platform support and real-time connectivity options. iWay Software's ETL product, DataMigrator, offers a . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Informatica: A Leader In Enterprise ETL, With A Pure-Play Solution

The Forrester Wave™ Vendor Summary, Q2 2007

by Rob Karel, May 2, 2007

Informatica holds the second-place spot, following IBM, in the Leaders category with a highly scalable and user-friendly enterprise ETL integration suite of its own, with its PowerCenter product at the core and popular add-ons such as Data Quality and . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise ETL, Q2 2007

IBM And Informatica Lead, With Business Objects And Oracle Close Behind

by Rob Karel, May 2, 2007

Forrester evaluated leading enterprise extract, transform, and load (ETL) vendors across 68 criteria and found that IBM and Informatica maintain leadership positions in enterprise ETL thanks to their ability to scale and perform batch and operational . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

IBM Leads In Enterprise ETL With A Comprehensive Information Management Suite

The Forrester Wave™ Vendor Summary, Q2 2007

by Rob Karel, May 2, 2007

IBM leads the way in the next evolution of the enterprise ETL market with its introduction of IBM Information Server (IIS), which embeds comprehensive data integration and data management capabilities into a suite enabling seamless collaboration between . . .

For Enterprise Architecture Professionals

Evaluating Integration Technology Options

Scenario-Based Guidance For Application, Process, And Data Integration

by Ken Vollmer, Rob Karel, March 19, 2007

The wide range of packaged integration alternatives, and resulting significant overlap of features and functions among the various product categories, make it difficult for enterprise architects to select the best alternative to meet their integration . . .

Demand Is Growing For Traditional And New Uses Of ETL

by Philip Russom, April 25, 2005

At least 75,000 user organizations worldwide rely heavily on extract, transform, and load (ETL) tools in critical business functions, so maintaining vendor robustness and overall growth in the market is important. The news is good: ETL grew 13.5% to $949 . . .

Enterprises Will Expand ETL Deployments In 2005

by Philip Russom, March 17, 2005

Extract, transform, and load (ETL) usage is experiencing a dramatic expansion, due to companies enlarging their data warehouses to include data from more sources and applying ETL to more data integration tasks outside of warehousing. Almost 80% of the . . .

Microsoft Addresses Enterprise ETL

SQL Server 2005 Integration Services Will Replace Data Transformation Services

by Philip Russom, February 22, 2005

Microsoft's new tool for extract, transform, and load (ETL) addresses enterprise ETL requirements like collaborative development, dedicated administration, and server scalability. It also goes beyond ETL to include functions related to data integration, . . .

Hubs And Windows Dominate ETL Production Environments

by Philip Russom, December 21, 2004

In a recent survey, Forrester found that extract, transform, and load (ETL) users prefer hub-and-spoke architecture 3 to 1 over point-to-point. And more than half of hub-based ETL production platforms run Microsoft Windows 2003 on Intel-based hardware. . . .

The Current State Of ETL Usage

Recent Interviews Quantify ETL Work, Reveal Needed Improvements

by Philip Russom, December 20, 2004

Extract, transform, and load (ETL) users have used their current tools for an average of 2.86 years, have only one ETL brand, don't use data quality functions enough, hand-code too much, and need to upgrade access to mainframe data. These and other observations . . .

Collaborative ETL Is Coming, So Get Ready

Bigger Teams Demand More Collaborative Tools And Best Practices

by Philip Russom, December 17, 2004

In recent years, corporations have increased staffing to keep pace with expanding uses of tools for extract, transform, and load (ETL). With ETL teams evolving from one or two members to as many as seven, software automation and best practices for collaboration . . .

How To Evaluate Enterprise ETL

Scalability, Connectivity, And Collaboration Are The Leading Requirements

by Philip Russom, December 17, 2004

Three requirements distinguish enterprise ETL: scalability, connectivity, and collaborative development. We applied these and other requirements to a Forrester Wave™ assessment of 14 vendor products to determine which are most capable of enterprise . . .

ETL's Brave New World Beyond Data Warehousing

by Philip Russom, November 30, 2004

Data warehousing and extract, transform, and load (ETL) go together like bread and butter. But progressively ETL is buttering other integration initiatives, like database consolidations and migrations. In fact, nondata warehousing usage of ETL has increased . . .