The Weather Channel Forecasts Organizational Efficiency with Talend MDM

Talend’s Enterprise MDM Solution to Provide a Single, Accurate View of Customer Data Across TV and Digital Properties

Los Altos, CA - November 14 , 2011 - Talend, a global open source software leader, today announced that The Weather Channel Companies (TWCC) has chosen Talend MDM Enterprise Edition, the leading open source Master Data Management (MDM) solution, as part of a critical migration initiative to integrate data from previously siloed sources and increase operational efficiencies.

The Weather Channel has a portfolio of companies that includes a television network, The Weather Channel digital properties and Weather Services International. Historically, each has operated as a separate entity with its own IT organization and business processes. Recognizing that data is its most valuable business asset, The Weather Channel used Talend Open Studio, the most popular open source data integration tool, along with its own hand-built mapping database, to begin migrating data from various order management systems to one environment, with the ultimate goal of creating a single, consistent view of its customer data domain. As the migration project continued, The Weather Channel realized that MDM was an essential prerequisite for creating and running a well-functioning organization.

“MDM has become a strategic initiative within The Weather Channel, with the potential to significantly impact our business,” said Ben Garrett, Director, Business Intelligence and Advertising Technology at The Weather Channel. “We selected Talend because they have proven their ability to help us realize our vision, and offered an affordable, open source alternative at a fraction of the cost of proprietary technologies. With Talend MDM, we will be able to create a unified view of customer data, leading to greater agility, simplified integration and, ultimately, better data quality than we have today.”

Talend MDM represents a fundamental shift in the MDM market. It is the first comprehensive solution for data integration, data quality, master data and business process management built on a single platform and available at a fraction of the cost of traditionally complex and dissociated solutions. This approach accelerates and simplifies MDM implementations while providing flexibility to expand its value over time. Talend MDM’s active data model allows organizations to immediately model and master any data domain, beyond customer and product and systematically improve data quality across enterprise systems. The solution reduces complexity and provides the necessary data stewardship tools that help teams efficiently collaborate on master data and meet data governance requirements.

“We are very pleased that The Weather Channel has chosen Talend MDM to streamline their operations and meet their migration objectives,” said François Méro, Talend’s vice president of global sales. “Over the last few years, IT landscapes have grown into complex arrays of different systems, applications and technologies.  Organizations of all sizes need to ensure that they have ‘a single version of the truth’in order to have a trusted and unified view of the data on their customers, partners and employees. Talend MDM enables organizations to quickly model and master any data and systematically improve access and reliability across enterprise systems.”

In addition to selecting Talend MDM, The Weather Channel has begun testing Talend Data Quality, Talend's enterprise data quality solution.

“We’re excited by what we have seen so far, and have begun incorporating Talend Data Quality into our processes internally,” added Garrett. “Data quality is what we plan to use to show progress towards our overall governance goals.”

About The Weather Channel Companies

The Weather Channel companies (TWCC) are made up of The Weather Channel® television network, The Weather Channel digital properties, and WSI. The Weather Channel is based in Atlanta and is seen in more than 100 million U.S. households. TWCC also operates Weatherscan®, a 24-hour all-local weather network; The Weather Channel Radio Network; and The Weather Channel HD. The most popular source of weather news and information, TWCC properties reach 60 million monthly Web consumers (weather.com and Desktop) and 32 million monthly mobile users (mobile Web and applications) and offers the second most popular mobile app on all smartphones. WSI, headquartered in Andover, MA, primarily provides business-to-business weather services, particularly for the media, aviation, marine and energy sectors. TWCC is owned by a consortium made up of NBC Universal and the private equity firms The Blackstone Group and Bain Capital. For more information, visit www.weather.com/press.

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