Purisma appliances signal new approach to data governance
Tony Baer -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 7/18/2007 12:00:00 AM
Taking a different approach to master data management (MDM) and related data governance issues, Purisma, a new start-up, asks, why not put all this into an appliance?
“Other [MDM] solutions force you to reengineer your systems to point to a single golden copy in one repository—an approach that can take years,” claims Bob Hagenau, Purisma's VP of products.
By contrast, Purisma’s Data Hub 3.0 offers a more federated approach that keeps, in effect, a metadata store inside an appliance. According to Hagenau, this approach eliminates the need to modify existing systems. Instead, all changes are made inside a metadata store that can track the relationship of a customer ID that might be maintained in an SAP enterprise system, Siebel CRM, or a Hyperion business intelligence system.
And to keep matters simple, the Purisma Data Hub takes a unique approach that applies the simplicity of hosted software-as-a-service offerings with locally installed software. Specifically, the product is downloaded as a self-contained J2EE application and database that is deployed inside a VMware partition. “By downloading our virtual appliance into VMware, we can remotely update and maintain the product just like it was software-as-a-service,” says Hagenau.
Purisma’s virtual MDM offering is used by enterprise systems supplier Infor to rationalize its disparate customer records
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“Having acquired roughly 40 companies, Infor is the epitome of fragmented customer data,” says Hagenau, adding that within six months after entering production, the Purisma appliance identified $5 million worth of renewal business that might have otherwise fallen through the cracks.
Purisma is planning specialized versions of its MDM offering—such as one containing Dun & Bradstreet data—so companies can understand the administrative structures of their customers.
Caption for graphic:
Purisma's Data Hub 3.0 enables companies to reconcile fragmented master data and create accurate “master records” by integrating and aligning data from multiple applications and third-party reference-data sources.
