Thursday, February 19, 2009

Syncsort and Trillium Software Partnership

When you think of Syncsort, you think of, well… sorting. SyncSort offers their flagship product - a high-performance sort utility - that has been used for years to decrease processing time for large volumes of data. In the case of multiple customer databases, for example, you may want to sort the files different ways and compare them on many different keys. Sorting on multiple keys is a very resource-intensive data processing function, so maximizing sorting speed and efficiency is crucial.
SyncSort’s sheer performance is made possible by a fast, but proprietary sorting algorithm. Because of that performance boost, many Trillium Software customers use Syncsort sorting as part of their batch data quality processes.
On the other hand, when your company is named after what you do, it’s hard to change what you do. Syncsort's DMExpress has little to do with sorting, but instead is the company's low cost ETL tool. Trillium Software recently announced connectivity between Syncsort and the Trillium Software System. Trillium Software’s fast, scalable data cleansing combined with Syncsort’s fast scalable ETL makes for a great pairing.
I’m fascinated by some of the metrics that Syncsort has posted on their web site. An independent benchmark claims that it’s the fastest ETL ever. DMExpress extracted, transformed, cleansed and loaded 5.4 TB of raw data into the Vertica Analytic Database in 57 minutes 21.51 seconds, using HP BladeSystem c-Class running RedHat. In other words, low cost hardware and record performance. It beats the big boys of ETL on many levels.
Many of the case studies I read on Syncsort’s web site are from companies who can finally afford to get rid of those slow, hand-coded ETL processes. When you reduce extraction time by over 80% in many cases, it gives you the ability to provide business intelligence that’s a lot more current, and that’s a big deal. For a quick, low cost ETL, DMExpress makes perfect sense.

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own and don't necessarily reflect the opinion of my employer. The material written here is copyright (c) 2010 by Steve Sarsfield. To request permission to reuse, please e-mail me.