ANAHEIM, CALIF. --Oct. 5, 1998--As part of this week's Fall '98 COMMON AS/400 user conference, Silvon Software, Inc. announced today that a recent survey conducted of AS/400 users indicates that more than 50 percent of businesses intend to explore various data warehousing solutions very soon. And, while only 20 percent of the respondents - representing the manufacturing, distribution, retail and services sectors -- have implemented data warehouse systems to date, approximately 75 percent said they will be seriously considering building a data warehousing system as a business intelligence solution before the Year 2000.
According to 60 percent of the surveyed companies, updating business information systems to reflect Year 2000 requirements is the most critical IT project installation in the coming year. These systems include data marts/data warehouses that are used to track, analyze and improve an operation's performance.
"Unlike most business systems, Silvon DataTracker is an application-specific data mart that's being used by several organizations to meet their Y2K needs without having to convert code for managing data in the year 2000,"stated Tom Redd, vice president of marketing, at Silvon Software. "As business data is loaded into Silvon DataTracker -- particularly historical data -- we have designed it to automatically add the digits and logic to support the year 2000 and beyond." Other survey highlights included:
Other program components ranked in terms of their respective importance were price, implementation services, scalability, single-vendor support and multi-platform product support.
"We are pleased to have the chance to listen closely to the demands of our marketplace," Redd added. "Our customers guide our development efforts - they are the priority. The more we listen, the more we learn, which allows us to continually deliver the products and services our customers want."
A white paper on vertical data warehouses from International Data Corporation, a market research firm, confirms the growing interest of businesses in data warehousing. According to the paper, "...solutions that reduce the cost, time and complexity of data warehousing implementation have the potential to reach a segment of the marketplace that is not currently being served" - particularly mid-sized organizations.
Silvon Software is a global application data mart (ADM) solutions provider headquartered in the western Chicago suburb of Westmont, Illinois. For the past 10 years, Silvon has been delivering multi-platform business intelligence ADMs for the industrial supply chain segment, including manufacturing (discrete and process), wholesale/distribution and retail. The company's DataTracker data mart suite is currently installed in more than 900 sites worldwide, and supported by a network of OEMs, value-added resellers and independent distributors. More information about Silvon is available by calling 800-874-5866, or via the company's home page on the Internet at: http://www.silvon.com.