expressor software, which targets departmental data integration projects in global 2000 and mid-market organizations, has introduced version 2.2 of the expressor semantic data integration system, which features enhanced semantic rationalization and team development capabilities, additional database connectivity and expanded Microsoft platform support.
expressor also announced four new partnership agreements to extend the company's reach in key markets and geographies. expressor and Teradata will collaborate to deliver affordable enterprise-class data integration and data warehousing solutions for small-to-medium size businesses (SMBs); and by partnering with Attunity, expressor can offer change data capture (CDC) and legacy data connectivity functionality for seamless access and delivery of data across heterogeneous sources. Meta Analytix will use the expressor semantic data integration system to deliver high-performance data integration solutions to the healthcare informatics market, and in a fourth partnership, Novedea, a Texas-based Microsoft-certified systems integrator focused on business intelligence solutions, will strengthen expressor's presence in the southern U.S.
The 2.2 version constitutes expressor's sixth release since it launched its 1.0 product in mid-2008. When the first product was first launched in 2008 the company primarily targeted the high end of the data integration market, but the focus has shifted to include a strong emphasis on the mid-market. expressor realized early on that the sales cycles in those global 2000 accounts was too long, Dr. Michael Waclawiczek, vice president of marketing, expressor software, tells 5 Minute Briefing, explaining that as a start-up, expressor is looking for a much more aggressive penetration into the market. The company "stumbled to some extent into what we call the mid-market," he says, and has found that there are a quite number of companies that are very interested in enterprise-class BI capabilities at an affordable price.
"What we realized is that there is actually a market out there which is the Microsoft SQL Server SSIS market, where we have encountered numerous opportunities," says Waclawiczek. There are SSIS customers who are "running out of steam" with SSIS and for whom the upgrade or migration strategy is to pursue other enterprise-class BI tools, says Waclawiczek. Most of these mid-market companies are unwilling to spend $250,000 for a BI solution, but for expressor, it is a "very interesting sweet spot," he notes. expressor, he emphasizes, is not telling customers and prospects they shouldn't use SSIS. "We feel it has its place, and it is free for existing customers who have SQL Server, but once you get to the point where you need enterprise-class capabilities, expressor can augment in that environment."
With this focus on the SMB market, expressor has made sure that the Microsoft platform is fully supported. expressor 2.2 adds support for Windows 7, Windows 2008 Server, IE8, SQL Server 2008. Additionally the new release supports very large data types, or what it refers to internally as big decimal types, allowing organizations to handle numbers up to 34 characters, which is important for pharmaceutical, healthcare and financial applications team development
A new "automatic" semantic rationalization option enables quick data access for tactical, time-boxed data integration/migration projects; an enhanced security model provides tighter integration with existing user authorization systems, including LDAP, MS Active Directory, and Kerberos; and the expressor metadata repository is now based on PostgreSQL for improved metadata management capabilities, better backup and recovery connectivity.
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