High quality, well-integrated customer data is the cornerstone of a successful CRM effort.
— Gartner, Inc.
Featured Document Sample
BKB Statement
The Basler Kantonalbank (BKB) needed an output management solution for its subsidiary company, Bank Coop, to provide customers with a consolidated overview of all of their assets.
New Features in 6.0!
Data Flow has been upgraded. Read about the new features.
Featured White Paper
Data Flow from Group 1 Software
Offers an overview of Group 1's Data Flow technology from leading IT analyst firm Bloor Research.
Featured Case Study
Pitney Bowes Partner Power Provides Fujitsu with Full ADF Solution
Learn about Fujitsu Service's recent implementation of a full Automated Document Factory (ADF) solution powered by successful collaboration across Pitney Bowes business units.
Data Flow™ Features and Benefits
Connects to Any Source of Structured Data
Data Flow™ makes it easy to rapidly access, connect, integrate and analyze data from a wide array of applications, databases and data files. By eliminating the need to write custom extract programs, you can implement solutions in hours rather than weeks or days. Data Flow™ handles the widest variety of data formats, from legacy applications to Web-based technologies. Available modules include Mainframe, AS/400 and R/3 (SAP).
Merges Multiple Sources
Unlike systems that require you to perform “join functions” within the database, Data Flow™ enables users to join two or more sources in memory. Consequently, you can more easily analyze or perform operations on data from multiple sources.
Shows Results in Real-time
The unique architecture of the Data Flow™ engine enables users to see the results of their data integration plan as the plan is running. In this way, you can avoid costly mistakes by inspecting the results and modifying the plan before populating the target database.
Rapid Deployment
Because Data Flow™ is an end-to-end data integration solution-from data access and manipulation to analysis and reporting-users do not have to integrate components from multiple vendors, thus reducing the complexity and implementation time. Data Flow™ is readily adaptable to other applications, even if an implementation utilizes third-party technology. As a result, the integration and deployment of Data Flow™ is straightforward and easy to accomplish. So you can implement complete solutions in days, not months.
Easy to Use and Support
Data Flow™ was designed from the ground up to support both business and technical users. Its intuitive interface allows individuals to become familiar and productive with the technology quickly. In addition, because all components come from the same vendor and can even reside on the same server, upgrades and system maintenance are seamless.
Requires No Intermediate Data Repository
The technology offers users the ability to join an unlimited number of heterogeneous data sources without writing the data to an intermediate staging area. Data Flow™ can natively support legacy applications, Web-based technologies and leading third-party applications such as SAP.
Modular Architecture
Data Flow’s modular architecture allows you to seamlessly add features as your business needs evolve. Additional modules include:
- Data movement & loading
- Data visualization & distribution
- Advanced analytics
- Data cleansing
- Data enhancement
- Source connectors
- Workflow automation
- Open hooks for third-party applications
Highly Scalable
Data Flow’s massively parallel, multi-threaded design allows it to process huge amounts of data using all of the computing power available on multi-processor UNIX and Windows servers. To maximize throughput, Data Flow™ processes data as a continuous stream of in-memory blocks. No intermediate staging or unnecessary disk I/O is required. Data Flow’s transforms simply operate on the block in memory and then pass it on to the next transform in the pipeline. New threads are spawned automatically as data sources are opened, as data paths branch and as data “sinks” are created. This ensures that raw server power is efficiently applied to tackle complex data integration problems.
Wealth of Transformations
Data Flow™ offers a powerful process-oriented transformation environment where users can build data flow plans utilizing reusable components to perform complex data manipulation tasks. These tasks include things such as joining information from multiple data sources, transposing data sets, time-data manipulation, string manipulation, lookups, data warehouse key generation, and many more. This high-performance application environment allows users to utilize a rich set of pre-built transformation objects by dragging and dropping them on screen to build the transformation flow logic. The transforms can also be easily customized to create specific business transformation rules that can be shared and reused by all developers. Most importantly, this process-oriented transformation approach provides an environment for visualizing solutions for complex data transformation problems.
Allows Rapid Adaptation to Changing Requirements
Data Flow™ enables users to reference data using business terms. This facilitates a more collaborative environment as business users can understand the transformation logic utilized by the IT department. Additionally, Data Flow’s patented technology lets users incrementally incorporate additional transformations with no interruption to existing business processes.