Ascential Software Maximizes the Performance of BI Solutions

WESTBORO, Mass.-- Ascential Software Corporation, the enterprise data integration leader, today announced full support for IBM's new DB2 Cube Views software. The Ascential(TM) Enterprise Integration Suite combines with Cube Views to accelerate the development and lower the total cost of ownership for online analytical processing (OLAP) and business intelligence (BI) applications by making them easier to deploy and manage. This new capability works with DB2 Cube Views' dimensional modeling to provide meta data management of information distributed throughout the enterprise. Ascential Software has developed a bi-directional MetaBroker interface between MetaStage(R), the meta data management component of the Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite, and DB2 Cube Views. MetaStage provides a clear and consistent view of the data's descriptive information and lineage, including the data being modeled with DB2 Cube Views. MetaStage also extends that visibility and usage tracking out to the BI analytical and reporting tools interacting with DB2 Cube Views. Ascential Software's extensive MetaBroker library now incorporates the powerful OLAP functionality of DB2 Cube Views into MetaStage's ability to provide analysis and management of business definitions and rules for data across the entire business intelligence, data integration and data management infrastructure. "Our announcement of DB2 Cube Views delivers on our focus of enabling enterprise reporting tools to gain significant improvements in the deployment and operational performance of business intelligence applications," said Karen Parrish, IBM's vice president of business intelligence. "Through our strategic partnership, IBM and Ascential Software deliver a robust platform for simplified development and maintenance of high-performance business intelligence solutions with a 360-degree analytics view of the enterprise." The rich functionality of DB2 Cube Views modeling is further enhanced by Ascential Software's DataStage(R) data transformation application, which drives information from a breadth of heterogeneous data sources into the DB2 Cube Views model. This includes data from enterprise applications, legacy databases, and mainframe sources, as well as data being delivered in high velocity from real-time sources such as Web services or IBM's MQ software. IBM DB2's scaleable OLAP capability and Ascential Software's parallel architecture enable companies to fully leverage any data volume and velocity they are likely to encounter in enterprise-class data warehouse and analytical deployments. Corporate analysts and business line managers tapping the functionality of DB2 Cube Views gain full access to information throughout the enterprise, benefiting from the performance of DB2 Cube Views' optimizing technology and Ascential Software's ability to rapidly deliver and transform high volumes of information, while ensuring its quality and tracing its source. "Ascential Software and IBM have enjoyed a long and successful partner relationship in business intelligence and data warehousing. IBM's new DB2 Cube Views release, supported by the Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite, significantly raises the bar for business intelligence platforms," said Jim Welch, Ascential Software vice president, engineering. "Our joint solution provides an environment where business users can easily represent and manage complex business metrics and reporting models driven by information residing in numerous locations throughout an enterprise." Ascential Software will also enhance its CA All Fusion ERwin integration to include multi-dimensional constructs to reduce the time to market and ongoing maintenance of DB2 Cube Views and other OLAP-based tools. The Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite is the only integrated solution to combine data profiling, quality and transformation. DB2 Cube Views support is the latest in a series of joint efforts between Ascential Software and IBM that include creating and implementing high-performance data warehouses, data marts and operational data store solutions for customers spanning numerous industries and geographies.