By Gillian Law
IDG News Service, London Bureau
The latest version of Kalido Ltd.’s information integration software, Kalido Dynamic Information Warehouse, boasts an improved referencing facility, which lets it understand and collect data from disparate systems.
Version 7 of the software (pronounced as in “kaleidoscope”), launched May 29, lets companies collect the information from different databases, ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) systems and view it in one amalgamated form, the company said.
It was developed by during the 1990s by the Royal Dutch/Shell Group (Shell), in an attempt to bring together all its information streams, Chris Worsley, Kalido’s vice-president of global marketing said.
“Shell has 45 SAP (AG) systems and 65 J.D. Edwards (& Co.) systems worldwide and needed to get an overall view of the information,” she said.
“They had been working on data modelling techniques, and a combination of that work and this information problem brought them to develop Kalido,” she said.
Reference data management, which has been improved in the new version, is the key to managing different systems, Worsley said. Kalido can cope with each system’s different reference data (if, for example, the European office calls a product “ABC” and the Asian one prefers “123”) and interpret it to come up with a cohesive view.
“That makes it noninvasive, and much easier to implement,” Worsley said.
It is also much easier to make later changes to product ranges, as the system can adapt, she said.
Other changes include improved business modelling developed in response to customer requests, a remote Web-based management capability and improved support for J2EE, SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), .Net, and XML (Extensible Markup Language).
The London company was spun off from Shell, of The Hague, Netherlands, and London, last year and 80 per cent of its revenue now comes from other customers, including Unilever PLC and Cadbury Schweppes PLC, Worsley said.
