InformationWeek.com

Welcome Guest. | Log In| Register | Membership Benefits

January 10, 2000

Hummingbird Updates Data Integration
New version of Genio suite provides improved usability and enhanced performance

By Rick Whiting

Related links:

XML: The Language Of Integration

ERP Vendors Move Into The Integration Market

And from our sister publications:

Network Computing Integrating Voice and Data

Send Us Your Feedback

ummingbird Communications Ltd. has shipped Genio Suite 4.0, the latest release in its line of data-integration and transformation tools. The release offers improved usability, including graphical views of data exchange processes, and performance enhancements.

Marketing director Sami Hero says Genio is positioned to compete with other such products on the market, including Informatica Corp.'s PowerMart and Ardent Software Inc.'s DataStage. Genio is also a key component of Hummingbird's recently unveiled enterprise information portal system.

Hummingbird acquired Genio in March when it bought Leonard Logic SA, one of several acquisitions it has has made in the last two years. "They are trying to make Hummingbird a one-stop shop," Michael Schiff, an analyst at Current Analysis, says of the company's business-intelligence products.

Topping the list of Genio 4.0's usability enhancements is its ability to provide visual representations of data flows and data dependencies. New "metadata explorer" capabilities provide views of metadata repositories, such as Cognos Inc.'s Catalogs and Business Objects SA's Universes. The software also supports the bulk-loading capabilities of the Oracle and NCR Teradata databases.

Genio 4.0 also provides improved links to data in SAP R/3 applications. That capability is of interest to the computer-consulting subsidiary of the National Bank of Canada in Montreal, which maintains all its IT project-management data in R/3. "It would be very useful for the project managers here to be able to use Genio to extract that information," says Stefan Davril-Favreau, a senior adviser at the subsidiary. The bank uses Genio 3.1 for transforming and moving financial data for analysis, and Davril-Favreau says the bank will likely upgrade to 4.0.

Although Hummingbird isn't expected to unveil Genio 4.0 until this week or next, the new release is shipping to customers and is generally available, Hero says. The Genio engine is priced at $75,000 for Unix platforms and $50,000 for Windows NT systems, while the design tools--including the metadata software--are $20,000. Software that connects to specific data sources and targets ranges from $5,000 to $20,000.

Back to This Week's Issue
Send Us Your Feedback
Top of the Page