Ascential Software South Africa has appointed AST Enterprise Solutions Management (ESM), a division of the JSE-listed AST Group, as a member of its DataStage Business Partner Programme. In terms of the partnership agreement, AST will work closely with Ascential in sales, marketing and implementation of the DataStage data extraction, transformation, and quality toolset, as well as provide first-line support and training services to South African customers.
Denzil de Klerk, Ascential channel manager for SA, says Ascential appointed AST as a DataStage business partner in recognition of its strong position in the South African data warehousing market, as well as for the quality of the resources and knowledge it has at its disposal. "Data quality is non-negotiable when it comes to data warehousing. The process of extracting, transforming and loading data from transaction systems into the data warehouse should be seamless, consistent and automated," says De Klerk.
"This reduces effort, saves time and money and ensures scarce skills can be focused on successful delivery of the data warehouse itself. We expect our partnership with AST to help South African customers attain these benefits." Gary Segal, business intelligence sales executive at AST ESM, says AST was attracted to the DataStage product as a data warehousing tool of choice because it is built on industry standard technology and offers customers a fast return on investment.
DataStage complements several other products in the AST stable, including the SAP R/3 enterprise resource planning package; the Oculus document management solution, and the Brio business intelligence software, adds Segal Segal says DataStage integrates tightly with the Brio.Report enterprise reporting tool and Brio.Portal analytic exchange portal, bringing a number of potential benefits to customers.
"DataStage and Brio are both built on an open architecture that embraces other business intelligence products. This will allow us, for example, to use the Brio Portal together with DataStage`s native support for XML to build business intelligence and knowledge management portals capable of tapping into structured and unstructured data," says Segal. DataStage also adds an essential component to the AST Group`s broad portfolio of SAP-related solutions.
"AST - through its divisions - offers complete SAP solutions, from consulting and implementation through to support, operation and value-added services. DataStage fits into this picture as a tool that customers can use to squeeze more value out of their SAP and legacy data," adds Segal Ascential markets two DataStage interfaces that are of particular interest to SAP R/3 users:
. The SAP R/3 Extract Pack for SAP, which enables extraction of SAP data to open warehouse data stores; and
. The SAP R/3 BW Load Pack which allows the loading and population of data from open warehouse data stores, flat files, mainframe and sources to SAP`s BW warehouse product.
Share
Editorial contacts