Fashion Institute of DM Selects Talend to Enhance Business Intelligence Capabilies

LOS ALTOS, Calif. - October 26, 2009 - Talend today announced that the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (FIDM), a private college dedicated to educating students for careers in fashion, graphics, interior design and entertainment industries, has chosen the Smart i Appliance-powered by Talend Integration Suite's Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) tool-to boost its business intelligence (BI) capabilities. The Smart i Appliance, a collaboration between Talend, Key Information Systems, Systech Solutions and IBM, is a plug-and-play BI appliance based on IBM's System i (AS/400) platform. Under the terms of the agreement, FIDM uses Talend's transformation components-such as mapping, normalizing, sorting and aggregating-to cleanse, transform and load data into a new data warehouse.

“FIDM executives need to access up-to-date, reliable data from our systems to be able to make key business decisions,” said Roxanne Reynolds-Lair, chief information officer, FIDM. “Talend's tool within the Smart i Appliance expedited our ETL processing, making it two to three times faster than before. This is a huge benefit for us, and it enables our team to retrieve accurate, timely reports that make a significant business impact.”

FIDM's previous ETL tool often experienced failed data transitions, proving it to be unreliable, leaving the organization's CFO with day-old data and manual calculations. In addition, the support for the solution was lacking due to the vendor's overseas location. When FIDM needed to expand its BI reporting functionality and make data processes more efficient, it turned to the Smart i Appliance, which includes Talend's ETL tool running native on the IBM i. FIDM uses Talend to extract and load data as well as integrate all Talend jobs and control the overall data process flow. With Talend, FIDM's BI reports are available much earlier, without any manual interface. In turn, updated information gathered through the system provides executives with accurate and timely reports, enabling them to make better informed business decisions.

“We are very excited to work with FIDM on its Smart i project. It truly leverages the benefits of Talend Integration Suite--an open, user-friendly solution that can make data processes more efficient for the leading fashion institution,” said Vincent Pineau, Talend's vice president and general manager, Americas. “Organizations such as FIDM need consistent information in order to make strategic decisions. This is another example of how companies across any vertical industry can benefit from a scalable, cost-effective and enterprise-class data integration platform such as Talend.”

For implementation of the Smart i Appliance, FIDM relies on Systech Solutions, a business intelligence solutions provider and Talend partner. Systech, one of the leading U.S. professional services firms delivering customer-focused business intelligence solutions, entered a strategic partnership within the Talend Alliance Program in early 2008. As a part of the agreement, Systech leverages Talend's software to help develop and implement robust solutions for clients with extensive data integration needs.

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