In-Depth

Here at Last: Innovative Touts Tightly Coupled DM Suite

The revamped i/Lytics is a solid release on the whole—but analysts say Innovative shouldn’t rest on its laurels.

• By Stephen Swoyer
• 12/21/2005

It’s been more than four years since Innovative Systems, Inc. introduced the first version of its i/Lytics Enterprise Data Management Suite. Back then, Innovative chiefly marketed i/Lytics as an integrated data quality offering. Since then, the company has rounded out its data management (DM) portfolio with several complementary offerings, including i/Lytics Data Profiler.

A quiver of complementary products does not an integrated platform make, however, and—up until now, anyway—Innovative couldn’t credibly position its DM solution portfolio as a tightly coupled suite.

That changed last week, when the DM specialist announced version 2.0 of its i/Lytics Enterprise Data Management Suite. Company officials position the new i/Lytics 2.0 as an integrated suite—i.e., it’s based on a single service-enabled architecture—that supports secure and collaborative data profiling and data quality, which can also be used as part of compliance efforts.

The revamped suite consists of four modules: i/Lytics Data Profiler, i/Lytics Data Quality, i/Lytics GLOBAL and i/Lytics SECURE. But it’s not just a one-trick pony, Innovative officials say. In addition to tight coupling between and among the four constitutive i/Lytics modules, Innovative also claims to have enhanced their capabilities. So i/Lytics Data Profiler, for example, can now directly export profiling results as HTML, as XML extracts, or in other formats.

There’s a lot more to like in the revamped i/Lytics 2.0, says Robert Lerner, a senior analyst for data management with Current Analysis Inc. For starters, he says, the i/Lytics Data Profiler repository is open and non-proprietary, which allows users to build their own SQL commands to extract data—in addition to i/Lytics’ exporting options—and expose the repository to third-party BI tools. “Profiling tasks can also be scheduled with i/Lytics’ workflow GUI, giving users flexibility in configuring profiling and enabling them to schedule tasks for specific times or on a recurring basis,” he adds.

Elsewhere, the new i/Lytics 2.0 ships with a security layer that supports role-based LDAP. Lerner says this is a relative first in the data quality space. The updated i/Lytics bundle includes new dashboards and a workflow GUI, too. On the whole, he says, there’s a lot to like in the revamped i/Lytics release. ”All in all, this is the strongest offering yet from Innovative Systems,” Lerner writes, cautioning—however—that the revamped i/Lytics 2.0 might not be completely backward compatible with its predecessor.

He cites a couple of other caveats, too. “Innovative Systems still lacks important postal certifications such as AMAS and SERP. i/Lytics Data Profiler also cannot profile data at its source. While there are advantages to bringing data into a repository, giving users both options provides them with more flexibility and the ability to look at their data in real time,” he notes. Elsewhere, Lerner points out, Innovative has said little about its non-name-and-address capabilities, which could be a showstopper in some environments. At the same time, he concedes, non-name-and-address data hasn’t traditionally been Innovative’s bread-and-butter market. “The company’s main business lies in name-and-address data, but it is potentially missing out on opportunities as the demand for data quality moves well beyond names and addresses.”

i/Lytics 2.0 also lacks an integrated data monitoring capability—another potential feature checklist liability. “While data monitoring can be accomplished with i/Lytics Data Profiler, the company should develop a solution that automatically monitors the quality of an organization’s data and provides alerts when the quality of the data falls below a certain threshold,” Lerner concludes.