Information management software specialist Sybase yesterday unveiled a new data integration suite designed to combine its existing data replication, federation, search and real-time integration capabilities in a single solution.

Gerrit Kolb, senior director of engineering products at Sybase, said that currently many firms deploy different point solutions to undertake different data integration techniques, such as extract, transform and load (ETL) tools, data federation, message queues and replication. However, he argued that an integrated suite would help streamline integration processes, reduce support costs and help firms unify their data and metadata formats.

"Using an out-of-the-box product where you can reuse integration techniques and reuse metadata improves the speed of integration, makes it easier for users to search for unstructured data, reduces costs as you need fewer ETL experts, and reduces the risk of system failure," he added.

An Eclipse-based development environment, called Sybase WorkSpace, and modelling capabilities from Sybase's existing PowerDesigner suite, also enhance the usability of the new suite and make it easier for firms to deploy the various integration techniques, the company said.

Kolb added that the suite will be expanded early next year to include the ETL functionality it acquired earlier this year from Solonde.

He predicted it would primarily be used by firms to underpin business intelligence (BI) deployments where users need reports to draw on multiple data sources, streamline system migration projects, and enhance information management initiatives.

The news was welcomed by Carl Olofson of analyst firm IDC who said in a statement that firms would gain performance benefits from replacing point solutions with a data integration suite.

“Enterprises continue to need more, better and faster business intelligence data to drive key decisions, and that data needs to be flexibly obtained from across the organisation,” he said. “Users often employ a combination of products to transform, move and combine data for such purposes, but the preferred approach involves a single product that provides a variety of heterogeneous data integration techniques with a common metadata and development environment."