Data hubs target top line growth

With data integration and master data hubs now seen as a high-level enterprise investment, enterprise software vendors are extending their feature set to include both technologies.

This week, Informatica will announce the next version of its data integration architecture, PowerCenter 8, which will add integration with unstructured data.

Meanwhile, Tibco Software announced last week the acquisition of master data hub company Velosel.

Working in concert to create a complete record of customer activity within a CRM app for example, data integration and master data hubs can help organizations grow revenue through cross selling and upselling.

Connie Moore, an analyst at Forrester Research, said the recent moves by companies such as Informatica and Tibco reflect the intensified focus on revenue growth in the enterprise.

With the economy improving, companies are shifting from cost reduction to increasing top-line revenue, getting products out to market, and improving customer service, Moore said.

Because it can help an enterprise better understand the needs of its customers and just what to sell them, "Master data management is a technology that contributes to a company's ability to grow," Moore said.

Informatica's PowerCenter 8 helps integrate every scrap of data used to create master data hubs. "Now we include unstructured and semistructured data from PDFs, credit rating services, spreadsheets, e-mails, and IMs," said Ivan Chong, vice president of product marketing at Informatica.

Tibco's Velosel technology uses both a federated or virtualized data management and centralized data repository architecture.

"We approach this as a business-process problem. The process defines whether or not data needs to be centralized and syndicated or federated," said Neeraj Gokhale, founder of Velosel.