BACKGROUND: R Cable, a cable operator in Spain, serves a market of 1 million businesses and homes advanced communications services, including telephone, high-speed Internet, video and instant messaging, and multichannel thematic television. Started in 1999, R Cable today has 53 percent market share, employs 190 people and generates more than $150 million annually.
HARDWARE PLATFORMS: Sun Solaris 480s, Oracle 9i, Siebel CRM, Apache, Vitria, Remedy, Intec.
PROBLEM SOLVED: R Cable is a very information-intensive business. We needed to establish a mechanism that would allow us to provide our customers and internal business teams access to real-time information about user account activities and competitive information. To achieve this goal, we needed to extract and integrate relevant information from multiple heterogeneous sources - both inside and outside the company. We needed a process that would allow us to access and consolidate structured data with unstructured internal and external data and semistructured data sitting behind a Web interface. Using Denodo Platform's Enterprise Data Mashups approach, R Cable is now able to leverage the huge amounts of data accessible through the Web and integrate it with our enterprise data to create more intelligent business applications.
PRODUCT FUNCTIONALITY: Denodo Platform is the only integrated platform to unify data integration, Web extraction and unstructured search/indexing capabilities. We particularly liked the fact that it provides a flexible means for merging data across any digital source. In the past, valuable customer data sat in different standalone enterprise applications. Valuable unstructured customer comments were also in these applications, in emails and documents. We spent a lot of time browsing our competitors' Web sites to manually track pricing and service packaging data. With Denodo's Automated Web extraction, we now have real-time access to this data and can integrate it with other relevant data sources. Denodo can even structure unstructured data and allow it to be queried. The Denodo Platform makes it easy for our customers to gain access to any and all information we have about them. This level of data would have been impossible to produce in real time without the rich functionality provided by Denodo.
STRENGTHS: No other data integration product we looked at provided the breadth and flexibility of the Denodo Platform. With the Denodo Platform, we are able to create a single view of customer data that encompasses data from any relevant sources. The product is simple to use and quick to implement. It has enabled us to create new business applications based on fresher, more complete data feeds.
WEAKNESSES: While the product supports read and write, we would like to see more transactional capabilities.
SELECTION CRITERIA: We needed to integrate application data with competitive and customer-generated information and needed to have the flexibility to easily add new sources. We considered deploying a data warehouse but realized it would be expensive and inflexible. We also considered using our existing EAI platform but realized it would not allow us to access unstructured or Web data. In contrast, the Denodo Platform provided comprehensive integration across all data types, was flexible and fast to deploy.
DELIVERABLES: The value we derive from using the Denodo Platform is immense. By providing customers (via the Web) real-time access to all information we have about them, we've significantly reduced the number of calls made to our call center, generated significant cost savings and empowered our customers. Better customer and competitor insight allows us to anticipate customer needs and product requirements. Our white pages were created as a result of valuable customer feedback. We're able to bring new products to market quicker while keeping infrastructure costs flat. And, we're able to establish more effective cross-selling campaigns by making online offers to customers interacting with the R portal. Today, thanks to Denodo, we've been able to improve our customer satisfaction levels, streamline business processes and identify new market opportunities. The Denodo Platform allows us to create a whole new class of data integration capabilities we never thought would be possible.
VENDOR SUPPORT: Denodo employees throughout the organization are very knowledgeable and responsive.
DOCUMENTATION: The documentation is well organized and easy to understand.
Denodo Platform
Denodo Technologies
530 Lytton Avenue, Suite 302
Palo Alto, CA 94301
(650) 566-8833
www.denodo.com
Product reviews are customer testimonials. We thank the author of this review for taking the time to share his or her expertise.
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