The advent of Embarcadero Technologies to the data integration market is set to have a profound impact on competitors. For instance, on the day Embarcadero announced its release of its own extraction, transformation and load (ETL) solution, shares in competitor Informatica tumbled more than 19%, dropping $1,89 and trading at $7,95 on the Nasdaq.
Embarcadero, on the other hand, was unchanged at $15,94. "There`s been talk about them losing some of their data warehousing business to Embarcadero," commented a trader and analyst. Both companies develop and market ETL software, which allows customers to manage and make sense of the enormous amounts of data they collect and store. The chief difference is that Informatica has an enterprise pricing structure, whereas Embarcadero focuses on lower-price products with similar functionality.
Commenting on the market jitters, Alan Raubenheimer, CEO of Embarcadero Africa, says: "Obviously it would be impossible for Embarcadero, with its recent entry to this market, to pose an immediate threat to the larger, well, established players in this space - but it does confirm perceptions about the quality and value of our offerings.
"Meta Group says data quality should be embedded in 95% of all CRM and e-business initiatives," adds Raubenheimer. "However, the cost and complexity of the solutions available in this market have made this goal unachievable, in effect ensuring that only the top 10 percent of companies can afford the tools and skills required to make it work. Embarcadero is addressing this imbalance by lowering the cost of ETL tools to affordable levels, and by reducing the complexity of the environment."
Where some ETL tools will cost millions to acquire and maintain, and have implementation cycles lasting many months, Embarcadero has the lowest price tag in the industry, and its wizard-driven interface ensures near-instant implementation.
Data quality tools ensure that the data used to power business intelligence, e-business and customer relationship management (CRM) initiatives is consistently clean, and that companies can cope with changes to their source or target systems. Without such tools, companies need to write and maintain their own integration routines, a task beyond the capability of most IT departments.
"Embarcadero is demystifying the issue of data quality, and bringing it into the mainstream, where it belongs," says Raubenheimer. "Gartner says 50% of data warehousing projects will fail because of poor data quality, and 90% of companies do not have a single, integrated view of their customers. The reason is that data quality is not front of mind, when it ought to be."
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