Harte-Hanks Trillium Software redefines how data quality is delivered within enterprises

A Web services interface for the Trillium Software System, that expands its real-time data quality management capabilities to Web services environments, is now being distributed by Trillium Software, a division of Harte-Hanks.

The Web services interface allows the Trillium Software System to be implemented with any Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) Web Server, and is customised specifically for two such servers, IBM WebSphere and BEA WebLogic.

The company also announced the first shipment of the Trillium Software Director as an application server option for the Trillium Software System. Providing a single, platform-independent program interface, the Director enables Trillium Software System customers to streamline the integration of their data quality processes into virtually any data management practice - from high-volume call centre data streams to multi-country data routing on intermingled platforms.

The Director also controls distribution of data quality requests, routes those transactions to the appropriately designated servers, and traces transaction flows to help data managers assess and optimise performance as needed.

By providing load balancing and multithreading across multiple servers, the Director enables sub-second data quality processing to keep pace in even the highest-volume transaction environments.

"With today`s shipments, we`re revolutionising how data quality is delivered within enterprises and, in the process, setting a new standard for data quality management," said Len Dubois, vice-president of global marketing for Trillium Software at Harte-Hanks. "As the first dedicated data quality company to ship such a functionally-rich solution for major Web Services environments from IBM and BEA, and to offer the universal connectivity of our new Director, we are enabling organisations to extend the complete Trillium Software System family of data quality products to any and all systems and applications. This allows customers to begin with a single implementation and expand their customised solution over time."

Created using industry-standard J2EE specifications, the Trillium Software Web Services solution allows customers to perform real-time data assessment, standardisation, enhancement and linking of international data to provide a single view of each customer across an entire enterprise. The Web Services interface can be deployed within any existing J2EE-based Web application server, either as a Web Service or as an EJB (Enterprise Java Bean).

"Web services are critical technology," said Mark Cooper, managing director of MigrationWare, the distributor of Trillium Software in SA. "And they will increasingly play a pivotal role in delivering real-time data quality solutions. The quality of data is essential to the success of any data integration or data management project, and data quality solutions implemented over Web services will go a long way toward ensuring that enterprise applications and real-time processes deliver on their promises."

Typical examples of data quality management within Web services include the relying of branch offices of an organisation on the single deployment of Trillium Software Web Services, hosted centrally in the main branch office or airline verification of passenger data for frequent flyer or security reasons as it receives reservations from another company`s Web site via Web services. Further examples are validation by a shipping organisation and the enhancement of shipping data online as customers place pick-up and ship-to orders from remote locations or an insurance company cleanses customer name-and-address information as it is entered into online systems by field agents; matches the data against its centralised customer database; and returns cleansed, more complete customer records to agents` terminals in real-time.