WESTMONT, IL — April 19, 1999, Silvon Software, Inc. today announced that it has joined the IBM DB2 Metadata program as part of IBM’s Business Intelligence Partnership Initiative (BIPI). The purpose of the program is to provide greater control and commonality over the data in Business Intelligence solutions, which comes from numerous components from different platforms and data formats.
Silvon will support the IBM DB2 Metadata standard to provide its customers with the ability to exchange information smoothly and easily between Silvon's DataTracker business intelligence solutions and the applications and tools offered by other IBM Business Partners. This provides some customers with the benefit of lower development and integration costs associated with implementing multiple Business Intelligence components.
IBM AS/400 customers can use IBM's Visual Warehouse to manage and access their metadata across their Business Intelligence environments, including IBM Business Partner tools and applications, as well as being able to manage the operational environment of complex data warehouses. IBM Visual Warehouse provides a centralized metadata repository that offers functional access to various databases in the data warehouse/data mart environment but also provides an "Information Catalog" to document and publish all aspects of the business intelligence environment for everything from user documentation to impact analysis.
"The benefit of this DB2 metadata initiative is that it offers our customers an ability to extract data from a wider range of operational databases to manage their entire environment," said Mike Hennel, Silvon’s president and CEO. "With this open architecture, any compliant cleansing, transformation or data visualization tool can be easily added to and integrated into the overall business intelligence environment within Silvon's DataTracker software. As a result, this provides a solution-oriented architecture that will drive modern successful businesses of all sizes and complexities. In fact, it is not just for use by administrators to manage the warehouse, but also by business users who are able to use the metadata to identify available information in a business context.
"Customers today recognize that successful data warehouse implementations require a common way to interchange metadata between applications and tools. I am pleased that Silvon has extended their partnership with IBM and has joined the DB2 Metadata program. The new metadata integration between IBM's Visual Warehouse and Silvon's DataTracker applications will enable our AS/400 customers to reduce their overall integration costs," said Steve Selbst, Manager, IBM Business Intelligence Solutions, IBM.
Since 1987, Silvon Software has focused on providing business intelligence software solutions for manufacturing, wholesale distribution and retail organizations. Silvon clients benefit from improving business practices and profitability by leveraging analytic information on customer, supplier, and operational profitability measurement. The company’s products are driven by the Silvon DataTracker application foundation, which stores and maintains large volumes of data in an efficient, highly scalable format for enterprise-wide access, navigation and OLAP analysis by business users and decision makers. Silvon DataTracker is currently installed in more than 1,000 sites worldwide and supported by a network of OEMs, value-added resellers and independent distributors.