Data: Quality and Flow

Pitney Bowes Group 1 Software dropped two new solutions today to improve the company's data quality and data integration capabilities. The two releases, which both fit into Group 1's three year product road map, include the new Customer Data Quality Platform (CDQ Platform) as well as release of the upgraded Data Flow 6.0. The CDQ Platform is intended to improve data management through providing a single layered customer data record, which incorporates data from all sides of the enterprise. Data Flow 6.0 enhances Group 1's data integration product to improve ease of use and metadata exchange. The two releases answer the call for a higher level of usability in the competitive market of data quality. "We're seeing a trend toward master data management and compliance," says Navin Sharma, director of product management for data quality. "Both of these trends are gearing up to the point where data quality is no longer a line item but essential to driving business decisions in a way that can be monitored and constantly improved." Sharma explains that with the CDQ Platform, Pitney Bowes Group 1 aligns itself with this trend by providing companies with complete transparence into the system and certifying data that's shared across the enterprise. The platform, which is built on service oriented architecture, allows users to define process rules to conform to data standards while leveraging the solutions' global address data quality and geocoding components. Data Flow 6.0, which is tightly integrated with the CDQ Platform, improves Group 1's 11-year-old data integration line with a focus on maintainability and metadata exchange. The new solution, which Ellen Raynor, vice president of product marketing for data integration, calls an easy peasy interface for data integration, includes an updated interface and simplified file exchange for metadata, which the solution can now describe in flat files. The upgraded Data Flow also includes enhanced support for hierarchical data sets, better automation, and reusable subplans. Ray Wang, principal analyst at Forrester Research, believes that the new products move Pitney Bowes Group 1 more toward the data integration market. With IBM Information Integration, Informatica, and SAS all having announced recent enhancements to their data quality solutions, the pressure in the market is quickly increasing. Wang explains that through these new releases, Group 1 is starting to come through on a need for integration which Trillium, FirstLogic, and Ascential (now IBM) have already addressed. "These are Group 1's primary competition and with this release they are capturing in on this data integration market and improving their product." Related articles: The 2006 Market Leaders, Part 2 Gartner's First Data Quality Magic Quadrant Pitney Bowes Will Acquire Firstlogic