Irish data quality technology firm Similarity Systems is understood to have acquired US player Evoke Software Corporation for a price tag of approximately €5m.
The acquisition significantly expands Similarity’s presence in the European and North American markets for business-focused data quality solutions.
Prior to the acquisition, the two companies already had a partnership to provide repository-level integration between their respective data profiling and data quality products, Axio and Athanor.
Data quality is an increasingly serious issue for organisations large and small. Before data can be used in a data warehouse or in customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning or business analytics applications, it first needs to be analyzed and cleansed.
Poor data quality costs businesses vast amounts of money and leads to breakdowns in the supply chain, poor business decisions and inferior CRM. Defective data also hampers efforts to meet regulatory compliance responsibilities in financial services providers and data alignment in the consumer packaged goods sector.
Tech analyst firm Gartner claims: “Awareness of data quality as an important business issue continues to increase as companies recognise the significant impact of incomplete and inaccurate data. Reduced productivity, failed IT initiatives, inability to comply with government regulations and the desire for successful enterprise information management are forcing organisations to improve their data quality.
“As a result, the data quality technology market continues to enjoy solid growth because more companies are looking for off-the-shelf tools to analyse and improve the quality of their data,” says Gartner.
It is understood that Similarity plans to merge its technology with Evoke’s technology to create an end-to-end data quality solution.
“The combination of Athanor and Axio provides businesses and government organisations with the industry’s most complete platform for successful planning and execution of data quality initiatives,” explains Garry Moroney, chief executive officer, Similarity Systems.
“This integrated solution includes data profiling, content analysis, matching and enhancement capabilities, spanning data quality projects from start to finish and providing a bridge between the business and IT professionals involved.”
By John Kennedy
