Netezza and Information Builders

Information Builders enables agile information solutions with business intelligence (BI) and integration technologies. WebFOCUS the most widely utilized business intelligence platform connects to any enterprise system or application and enables simple and intuitive interaction with information.

Netezza and Information Builders

Data is rampant. Applications and users fuel even more data points. Data warehouses are overflowing with whatever information the CIO and data architects decide is important. Cost control, security sensitivity, data access, data quality, and the ability to analyze information are what drive every data warehouse decision. To impact their business, more companies are unlocking the value of data within customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), data warehouses, and other applications while looking to new technology investments to improve their IT infrastructure. To help companies fully leverage their enterprise data, and enable business users to quickly uncover strategic insights, Information Builders and Netezza offer a powerful analytics foundation. We ensure that your critical business processes are driven by timely, accurate, and complete information to generate better business results. We also provide advanced analytics on large volumes of data to any number of users across an organization. The speed, reliability, and scalability of Netezza and Information Builders empower users to make better business decisions in real time. Information Builders provides Netezza customers with enterprise-ready business intelligence (BI), predictive analytics, integration, and data governance. Users gain a clear and concise understanding of data on customers, products, partners, suppliers, locations, assets, or other domain types. Meanwhile, only Netezza offers TwinFin, a modular, upgradable and scalable appliance, which allows organizations to add capacity on demand. The partnership allows Netezza customers to load, cleanse, predict, and analyze the data within their data warehouse. As a data warehouse appliance leader, Netezza combines storage, processing, database, and analytics into a single system that improves query performance by 10 to 100 times, at one third the cost of other approaches.

Integration, ETL, and Master Data Management

Information Builders allows you to gain a complete, unified, consistent, and standardized view of your data to drive critical business decisions. We also help gain control of your data, reduce errors, and eliminate duplicate data all of which improves the quality of your information. Organizations can access every piece of data in their enterprise no matter where it resides or what application its in. Access to continuous real-time data remains crucial for a business to function at its best.

Information Builders iWay Software division provides a broad portfolio of offerings:

Comprehensive suites that support mission-critical integration initiatives such as business process automation (BPA), business-to-business (B2B), and enterprise information management (EIM) A powerful ESB integration server complete with real-time activity monitoring and governance that enables rapid integration assembly from pre-built components. This accelerates return on investment (ROI) and reduces total cost of ownership (TCO) by maximizing reusability and eliminating the need to write custom integration code A patented suite of adapters that can seamlessly connect more than 300 data sources and information assets within or beyond the enterprise

iWays DataMigrator enables fast, flexible, end-to-end extract, transform, and load (ETL) process creation involving heterogeneous data structures across disparate computing platforms. It allows users to:

Aggregate, join, merge, and apply selection criteria to information from any combination of systems Simplify data movement from operational systems into Netezza Transform data from raw forms into structures that are more suited to specific applications Simplify loading of data into a target database through the automatic invocation of bulk loaders or row-at-a-time inserts and updates Execute, schedule, review, manage, audit, and create dependencies among ETL requests Eliminate the time spent manually coding processes to extract, transform, and load data

One of the last things companies recognize as their data and information strategy grows, is the importance of the quality of the data being collected. Reports and queries generated through a BI product, metrics exposed in performance management systems, and predictions made using analytical software will all be negatively affected by corrupt, invalid, or incomplete information. Dirty or incomplete data can dramatically reduce confidence in the information produced and can cause companies to make bad decisions that hinder performance and profitability. Data transactions were traditionally processed by data entry clerks who manually entered information into systems to create a new sales order, add an employee, update an account, etc. These manual entries have always been the cause of mistyped zip codes, incorrect salutations, and other bad data. Each error, no matter how small, contributes to company-wide data pollution. If data is not corrected, then every report, analysis, scorecard, dashboard, and prediction will have some level of inaccuracy. Master data management (MDM) is a combination of processes and technologies that enable the creation of a single system of record. This golden record provides a set of validated, universally recognized values derived from the various sources that house similar information. These values are then reconciled and stored in a centralized hub such as Netezza to be used as a primary frame of reference by all enterprise users. This hub also feeds complete, consistent, and correct data back to all applications and databases across an entire business. The iWay Data Profiler allows anyone in an organization to easily view, monitor, compare, and report business data without any additional client software, plug-ins, or report viewers. The iWay Data Quality Center (DQC) not only evaluates, monitors, and manages data quality in different systems, but also prevents bad data from entering these systems in the first place.

With Netezza, your data warehouse becomes a strategic corporate repository supporting an entire enterprise across a multitude of business applications. The brisk pace of business change demands that Netezza steps into a mission-critical, operational role. Only iWay Software can fully complement and help you realize ROI from Netezza by ensuring your data is accurate, complete, and available for reporting in real time. iWay Software offers reliability, maintainability, and high performance when you need to access data in any of your enterprise databases or load data into Netezza. iWays solutions accelerate business integration by providing a foundation for business agility with a low cost of entry and full project reusability. iWay supports universal data access to deliver value from all enterprise data assets, regardless of source or format. It works with a wide array of data sources, including:

Relational databases (Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, Sybase, Teradata, Informix, etc.) Mainframe/midrange data (IMS, VSAM, DataCom, etc.) Prepackaged enterprise applications (SAP, Siebel, PeopleSoft, etc.) Messaging systems (IBM MQ Series, TIBCO Rendezvous, Web Methods, etc.) Standards (XML, Web Services, JMS, ODBC, JDBC, LDAP, IMAP, POP, etc.) Unstructured data (Word, PDF, Excel, etc.) Semi-structured data (HL7, ACORD, FIXML, SWIFT, EDI, etc.)

iWay Software accelerates business integration for Netezza by simplifying it dramatically, eliminating custom integration code and replacing it with the straightforward assembly and configuration of off-the-shelf components. iWay provides everything necessary to achieve real-time, near-real-time, or batch integration more quickly and easily than competing tools and the roll-your-own approach.

Comprehensive Predictive Analytics and BI

The Information Builders WebFOCUS BI platform is a comprehensive and fully integrated enterprise reporting platform, which permeates every level of an organization executive, analytical, and operational and makes any data accessible and meaningful in any format, to any user. Information Builders non-persistent connection to Netezza allows users to get the information they need fast, accessing real-time data without compromising speed or performance. Traditional reporting solutions provide a clear picture of past occurrences, but dont shed light on the future. The ability to anticipate and prepare for upcoming events can greatly impact the decisions that need to be made today. WebFOCUS is the markets first fully-integrated business intelligence and data-mining environment, seamlessly bridging the gap between backward and forward-facing views of business operations. Companies can easily and cost-effectively deploy predictive models as intuitive scoring applications. So business users at all levels can make decisions based on accurate, validated future predictions, instead of relying on instinct. Netezza develops combined server, storage, and database appliances that analyze terabytes of data. It is a breakthrough solution for tera-scale business intelligence. Netezza is an affordable enterprise-class data warehouse appliance that dramatically reduces response times and enables analysis that was not previously feasible. It provides effortless scalability and full compatibility at a better price point. Netezza is transforming the way organizations are leveraging BI.

Find Out More

To find out how our solutions can help your company succeed, talk to an Information Builders representative today. Contact your local Information Builders office, visit us at informationbuilders.com, or in the U.S. and Canada, call (800) 969-4636.

A Powerful Combination in Action

Nationwide Financial Services, Inc., which helps consumers invest and protect their long-term assets, uses WebFOCUS and Netezza to help it standardize on a single operational reporting tool and improve its data reach. Nationwide had numerous disparate reporting tools and databases, which caused business users to lose valuable time searching for the right information. The company needed to centralize its infrastructure, while maintaining a federated reporting model, which would empower business users with real-time information and customized reports. According to P. Bhasker, CTO of Nationwide, WebFOCUS and Netezza help us manage costs through their strategic platform, and it also represents a very good model from an ROI perspective. With WebFOCUS, Nationwide can provide information to its business users from disparate data sources including Oracle, SQL Server, and its Netezza data warehouse. The BI platform provides Nationwide with one operational reporting tool to leverage across the organization and the ability to scale to 1,000 business users, operations managers, and wholesalers. WebFOCUS will eventually be customer-facing, making it easier for Nationwide to be more responsive to its customers needs.

The Benefits of BI Backed by Netezza

A low cost of entry and the ability to scale to accommodate growth and future reporting needs are vital reasons to adopt both WebFOCUS and Netezza.

Simplicity Fast implementation allows organizations to quickly unlock the value within data and deliver industry-leading query, reporting, and analysis capabilities to end users Performance Dramatically faster and easier access to data so IT doesnt become backlogged and end users dont have to wait for the information needed to support reporting, analysis, and decision-making Cost-Effectiveness Fewer resources needed to implement and maintain, resulting in a lower cost of ownership

Netezza is fully compatible with interfaces such as OLE DB and processes ANSI SQL with no proprietary syntax required. Integration is seamless and no changes are required to legacy applications or data. Customers can leverage a database connection to Netezza and continue to use their existing data models. Netezza, when deployed with WebFOCUS, provides strong benefits that extend ease-of-use and lower the cost of the total BI solution. Netezza and Information Builders offer a best-of-breed total solution for business intelligence and data warehousing. The combined solution delivers a powerful BI foundation that gives users more meaningful access to their data, faster answers, and the ability to conduct richer analyses against deeper, more granular data sets. The WebFOCUS and Netezza data warehouse appliance delivers these benefits precisely and enables organizations to stay one step ahead of their competitors. Storing and processing greater volumes of data and generating accurate, timely reports for a great number of users impacts decision-making and improves revenue.

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