IBM and ETI strengthen business intelligence solutions with development and marketing agreement

Business Wire, Feb 11, 1997

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 11, 1997--IBM and Evolutionary Technologies International (ETI) Tuesday announced a development and marketing agreement designed to help customers cut the cost of developing and maintaining data warehousing solutions and boost their return on investment.

IBM will augment its business intelligence offerings, which help users glean valuable information from stored data by reselling ETI's flagship, ETI-EXTRACT (a) Tool Suite, a set of powerful software productivity tools for automating enterprise-wide data integration.

This agreement marks another step IBM is taking to help exploit the potential of network computing by allowing users to easily manage their information assets and leverage them to make better business decisions.

IBM and ETI are also teaming up to enhance ETI-EXTRACT's support of IBM's DB2 (b) database family, including DB2 for MVS (b), DB2 Parallel Edition (b), DB2 for AS/400 (b) and the new DB2 Universal Database. As a feature-rich, scalable, open and Web-enabled database, DB2 is a leading choice for data warehousing solutions.

A recent Data Warehousing Institute Survey of more than 6,200 enterprise customers revealed that more than 56 percent were either using, or planning to use, DB2 for their data warehousing needs.

"IBM's business intelligence solutions are based on best-of-breed technology integration," said Janet Perna, general manager of data management, IBM Software Solutions Division.

"Our customers must have confidence in the integrity of the data stored in their data warehouses. The combination of IBM's DB2 products with ETI-EXTRACT will provide our customers with a complete set of data warehousing tools that can meet that need and that can work together efficiently and effectively."

"Like IBM, ETI is committed to technology excellence and providing customer value," said Dr. Katherine Hammer, president and CEO, ETI. "The IBM/ETI relationship clearly demonstrates a strong commitment to product integration, which delivers real value to the customer.

"This agreement not only expands and strengthens ETI's relationship with IBM, but it also greatly benefits end-users who rely on IBM and ETI for long-term, infrastructure-oriented solutions that meet their diverse and demanding data integration needs."

IBM's development integration of ETI-EXTRACT will focus on four areas: enhancing support for the DB2 family as the data warehouse store; metadata, the information used to manage and understand the content of the data warehouse; change data replication, needed to maintain very large databases in the warehouse; and warehouse management, for automated and reliable operations.

Fits Hallmark's "Strategic Direction"

"At Hallmark, DB2 is our direction for DBMS technology in the mainframe environment. The ETI-EXTRACT toolset is Hallmark's development tool of choice for creating bi-directional batch interfaces between DB2, legacy mainframe systems, midrange-based DBMS business applications and midrange-based data warehousing initiatives," stated Art Winter, information technology manager, I/T Technical Services for Hallmark Cards Inc.

"From our standpoint, the announcement is a formal recognition of what was already a good fit; ETI-EXTRACT's ability to bridge heterogeneous data and a critical technology in the equation, IBM's DB2. The joint venture fits very neatly into Hallmark's strategic direction for IT infrastructure related to data replication."

"Building an enterprise-wide data warehouse in a heterogeneous environment can be a daunting task," said Robert Craig, director, Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Service, Hurwitz Group Inc. "Warehouse builders must integrate tools from diverse vendors to manage the intricate data warehouse life cycle. This announcement is a welcome example of two companies partnering to deliver integrated solutions in a fragmented marketplace."

Hurwitz Group is a management consulting and software research firm that provides strategic and tactical counsel to both corporate users and software vendors on software technologies.

ETI-EXTRACT

ETI-EXTRACT offers a simple point-and-click interface that allows users to select, manipulate and move data around an enterprise. Based on users' specifications, ETI-EXTRACT automatically generates and executes all of the programs necessary to complete the tasks. ETI-EXTRACT can be tailored and extended to almost any heterogeneous data environment.

In addition, ETI-EXTRACT captures extensive metadata and provides unique, flexible metadata management capabilities, which are critical for effective data warehousing. These features can help customers reduce the cost of development and maintenance.

IBM plans to resell the ETI-EXTRACT Tool Suite to complement its integrated portfolio of enterprise data management offerings, including Visual Warehouse (b), DataGuide (b) and Data Propagator (b). As a single, scalable solution, the IBM/ETI combination can improve user productivity and ensure timely implementation.