Competitive pressure is driving companies to spend millions on business intelligence architectures, enterprise resource planning systems, c mer relationship and decision reporting; however, companies frequently overlook a fundamental component for success: clean and reliable data. Data provides the building blocks of information. If the data found in operational systems, data marts and data warehouses is incomplete, inaccurate or inconsistent, any attempts to find value in corporate information will fail. Without high-quality information, decision makers are left guessing about things they should know, or worse, unknowingly making "informed" decisions with flawed information.

The success or failure of any enterprise architecture or meta data project owes more to the ability to translate data into information that can then be easily accessed by users, than by any amount of technical excellence on the part of tool vendors.

Adaptive, a leading repository vendor, has built its business around the delivery of tools and solutions that focus on delivering repository information in an efficient user-friendly manner.

This presentation will focus on ways of delivering Meta Data and Architecture, in a manner that achieves the prime objective - Delivering the information the user requires, when the user wants it, in the way the user requires - and will draw upon experiences gained in major European clients.

Data integration is a major part of critical business initiatives, such as CRM, e-Business, ERP, Data Warehousing or Mergers and Acquisitions. These are some of the highest risk IT projects around, yet as many as 88% fail to deliver on time or to budget.

A primary reason for this extraordinary failure rate is that organisations are often forced to rely on inaccurate metadata and out-of-date documentation, resulting in design specifications based on assumptions about the source data, rather than a thorough understanding. This results in run-away projects and even total project failure.

Avellino’s CEO, identifies the risks and issues associated with data integration projects and discusses an analysis-led, risk-oriented, tool driven approach that will drastically reduce the risks associated with delivery allowing a project to be planned and managed with total accuracy and confidence.

• Learn how Datanomics new data audit and cleansing suite, Datanomic, enables you to audit the quality of existing data of any type, and clean it up using simple rules-based procedures.

• See how Datanomics customers are benefiting from a powerful software tool which saves time and costs in data migration, maintenance and the implementation of new data management systems, and provides the basis for implementing a data quality management policy.

• Real-life examples will show how Datanomic puts data quality back under your control, using custom scripts and rules to clean up the problems affecting your data.

In this session Innovative will present a proven model for building and maintaining Data Quality as a corporate asset. Abbey National will discuss how they have taken this model and applied it to their complex environment to achieve massive savings on their Direct Marketing efforts as a result. In addition, Abbey National will show how it has employed Innovative’s Data Quality expertise and software to support their e-commerce initiatives. Finally, Abbey will discuss how they have reconciled the different customer profiling requirements of e-commerce and direct marketing in a single database.

MetaMatix
Enterprise Information Integration: Model Driven Data Integration, in Java Using MOF XMI and UML, David Penney, CTO, MetaMatrix Europe

MetaMatrix v2.0 is the first complete solution using UML data models to drive a retrieval engine for federated data access. MetaMatrix is the only solution that combines an enterprise caliber metadata management solution based on the OMG's UML, XMI, and Meta-Object Facility (MOF) standards with a scaleable, heterogeneous data access technology. Together the MetaMatrix MetaBase repository and the MetaMatrix Information Integration Server are a model driven product for information integration.

The speaker will:

• explain the speed of implementation benefits and cost savings associated
  with an implementation
• outline key features of the MetaMatrix Information Integration Server
  (incorporating the MetaBase metadata repository)
• show the MetaMatrix Modeler in action as a live demonstration and
• discuss how this approach was used at Schroders & Co Private Bank to
  deliver corporate management information that allows the company to track
  its performance closely and direct marketing activities. MetaMatrix
  delivered integrated access to 6 complex data sources within 4 days.

The MetaMatrix Server is a highly scalable, all Java solution that provides an integrated view and uniform access to very diverse data sources. The integration environment supports relational databases, API's, as well as,unstructured, flat files, market data feeds, messaging systems and time series data sources. MetaMatrix Information Integration Server comprises the MetaBase OMG MOF based repository, advanced modeling, management and development tools.

This highly-integrated solution results in significantly reduced development timeframes for Business Intelligence,CRM and e-business solutions.

It’s probably easier to count the number of failed ‘dot-com’ adventures than the number of ‘mission critical’ information quality initiatives that get canned. And why are there so many? Well, high on the list of reasons is that no-one gets to grip with the practical side of delivering enterprise data quality.

The theory all sounded great, but the practice was a spaghetti of confused objectives, confusing vendors and ultimately a condemned project. This session is designed to share the methods our customers have used to ensure that their projects deliver on time and within budget.