New Enterprise Information Integration Sector to Fuel $7.5 Billion Market by 2003 Aberdeen Launches Enterprise Information Integration Practice

Business Wire, May 8, 2002

Business/Technology Editors

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 8, 2002

In a report released today, Aberdeen Group, a leading market analysis and positioning services firm, states that new Enterprise Information Integration (EII) technology will fuel a $7.5 billion market in leveraging Internet information by 2003. This research is a result of Aberdeen's new Enterprise Information Integration practice, which covers emerging and established companies providing solutions that leverage corporate information across data sources. The practice also analyzes related marketing, technology, and business trends.

"Three years of fragmented efforts to link key applications one by one, followed by a proliferation of enterprise portals that crisscross various back-end data sources, have left users with an unnecessarily complex and costly e-Business architecture," says report author Wayne T. Kernochan. "The key to cutting administrative and new application development costs is to implement a common software-infrastructure architecture -- and EII infrastructure lies at the core of such an architecture."

Moreover, EII plays a key role in the success of Web services. Today's Web services are not one-to-many: They do not contain a single back-end interface that can access and aggregate multiple back-end applications and databases. EII, which puts a one-to-many database "veneer" on existing legacy data sources, has the potential to provide the same business benefits on the back end as a Web service can on the front end -- the administrative cost savings, the programmer productivity, and the leveraging of competitive-advantage information to deliver new ties to customers and suppliers. Aberdeen explores the potential of EII as an enabler for Web services in an upcoming White Paper, "EII: A Key Missing Piece of the Web Services Solution."

In addition to the White Paper, Aberdeen will also release a research report, entitled "Enterprise Information Integration: The New Way to Leverage e-Information," which defines the business and marketing factors driving EII; forecasts market size; and profiles Acta Technology, Attunity, Callixa, Cerebellum, Decision Support, Enterworks, Evolutionary Technologies, Metamatrix, and Venetica.

For more information about "Enterprise Information Integration: The New Way To Leverage e-Information," (http://www.aberdeen.com/ab_abstracts/2002/05/05020005.htm) visit www.aberdeen.com or call (800) 577-7891. For more information about Aberdeen's EII practice, contact Wayne T. Kernochan at kernochan@aberdeen.com or (617) 854-5217.

About Aberdeen

Aberdeen Group is a leading market analysis and positioning services firm that helps Information Technology vendors establish leadership in emerging markets. Steeped in technology and armed with end-user field research, Aberdeen answers clients' critical business and technology questions in the context of the Internet economy and across the product lifecycle. Founded in 1988, Aberdeen is headquartered in Boston, MA, and has research divisions in Fort Collins, CO; Palo Alto, CA; and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Aberdeen is accessible via the Web at www.aberdeen.com.