Archive for June 23rd, 2008

23
Jun

Talend Open Profiler, the first open source data profiling solution

top_perspective.jpgWe have just released Talend Open Profiler – the first open source data profiler.

Put simply, data profiling is the process of examining the data available in existing data sources and collecting statistics and information about this data. Data profiling – while an interesting discipline in its own right – is especially interesting when executed as part of a data quality strategy. In other words: know your data, before you attempt to fix it.

Talend has always considered data quality to be an integrant part of data integration. From day one, we have started to build some data quality and data cleansing components: deduplication, enrichment, fuzzy logic matching… Data profiling clearly takes us to the next step and allows us to introduce a data quality focused product suite. A data quality suite that can – and should – be used wherever data integration is used. But also, that can be used standalone when dealing with data quality issues – outside of the realm of data integration.

Like human viruses, poor quality data travels faster when applications are integrated. In the 19th century, epidemics would stay local. In the 21st century, the SARS infection spread worldwide in days… As information systems are no longer standalone, and all applications and databases communicate and exchange, being certain of the level of quality of your data is key. Before you send erroneous or incomplete data to corrupt other systems…

So – couple things. First, join me in congratulating the Talend data quality development team, led by Sebastiao, for a terrific product. Second, download Talend Open Profiler, test it, use it, post in the forums, report bugs or features request, and tell us what you think!

Yves

23
Jun

Price increases: because they can

Following suit to SAP, Oracle has just increased their prices 15 to 20%. Why? Because… they can!

SAP, Oracle, IBM have spent billions of dollars over the past 3 years to build the most comprehensive software stack they could. Along the way, they have also acquired hundreds of thousands of customers, along with their contracts. And they promised nothing would change, except for the best. What they forgot to add was “the best… for themselves!”

Typical giant company arrogance? Maybe… but remember what MicroStrategy did 3 years ago when they doubled maintenance prices for all their customers? Now, that’s certainly a reasonable size company, but not a software giant.

They are doing it because they can. I bet they have performed statistical analysis of how many customers they would lose, and decided the 20% extra money they would get from the others would outweigh the lost customers.

Why can they do it? Because their customers are locked in by the proprietary model. When you have invested millions of dollars or euros in Oracle or SAP software, you can’t just walk away from it. And since you don’t have access to the source code, or to an alternative network of service providers who can take over support and maintenance, you are stuck with them, for best or worst. And this year, worst seems to be taking over.

But there are alternatives! In the data integration field, many companies are switching over to open source. For example we related recently how Eurofins gave up Oracle’s data integration stack and picked Talend’s. Among heavyweight companies selecting open source data integration, we can list Fidelity Investments, Virgin Mobile, US Cellular, Shopping.com, and many others.

What are you waiting for? The next price increase?

Bertrand