Success Stories
CRM ASP Data Warehouse - I-Centrix
(published July 2001, DM Review)
Background
I-Centrix is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Application
Service Provider (ASP) focusing on customer-centric data integration,
analysis and warehousing. I-Centrix offers customer identification,
prospecting, fulfillment, and database maintenance services for
several industries, including: banking, political campaigns, catalog
marketers, and higher education institutions. I-Centrix has extensive
experience in working with large, customer-focused data. Sorting
and data manipulation is a daily requirement. The volume of data
passed for a given project is typically measured in tens and hundreds
of gigabytes. Jim Finnerty, VP of Operations for I-Centrix is responsible
for the data processing group at I-Centrix.
Hardware
Sun UltraEnterprise servers running Solaris version 7. Sun A5000
storage arrays.
Problem Solved
I-Centrix uses CoSORT for many sorting and manipulation activities,
and has integrated CoSORT into a specific product addressing data
segmentation. For many CRM initiatives, the ability to separate
customers into distinct groups or segments is critical.
Due to the complex nature and requirements of the segmentation
process, traditional relational databases with SQL cannot efficiently
process the information. I-Centrix has developed a segmentation
engine as part of a larger data fulfillment application that leverages
CoSORT's ability to rapidly sort data. I-Centrix utilizes Oracle
8i as the database engine and has integrated CoSORT as a key component
of the segmentation engine.
By utilizing CoSORT's sort and join capabilities, I-Centrix is
able to produce full customer segmentations in a fraction of the
time than Oracle (when used without CoSORT) did.
Product Functionality
CoSORT sorts data very rapidly, but also includes support for functionality
not common in most data sorting software. CoSORT's sort control
language (SortCL) program, for example, uses an approachable scripting
syntax, which is very easy to learn and use. Being long time users
of various sort utilities, CoSORT's SortCL language is the
most flexible and extensive language we have seen. Sortcl allows
I-Centrix to very quickly perform data manipulation tasks without
having to integrate multiple development and programming environments.
A person knowledgeable in the SortCL syntax can be very productive
with this tool alone in data manipulation and translation tasks.
CoSORT also provides an API that allows for the integration of
sort functionality into other, broader applications. The current
CoSORT API is very rich and is thread safe. With the integration
of CoSORT, I-Centrix is able to leverage a very capable and high
performance sort engine with no extra development effort. Thread
safety was a big plus especially considering CoSORT's competitor
was not supporting this functionality at the time of our evaluation.
Support for SQL-like joins and aggregations are important and strong
features of the product. The join feature allows two files to be
joined together on key columns without having to utilize other software
or a relational database. Aggregation is carried out with the same
SQL-like SortCL syntax, which supports count, sums, averages, min
and max values. Other key features for I-Centrix are CoSORT's support
for cross-column mathematical calculations. With these features,
expressions can be carried out in-line with sorting and summarization.
The product also interfaces well with its environment, supporting
a data definition file, strong support for shell variables, and
ease of incorporation with named pipes and standard input and output.
Strengths
CoSORT's strengths started with excellent sort performance. In our
tests, CoSORT was slightly faster than its major competitor, and
provided a more tunable environment that allows the product to not
overwhelm the system. CoSORT's SortCL language as mentioned
is also very strong.
Weaknesses
The ability to reference an external data definition file is a great
feature that helps with metadata management. It would be nice if
CoSORT did not require the file name to be imbedded in the .ddf
file -- this would allow a generic definition to be used with multiple
same layout files.
Selection Criteria
I-Centrix evaluated CoSORT and its main competitor. The selection
criteria included performance, functionality and price. CoSORT performed
well, had more functionality in the areas I-Centrix was most concerned
with, and was less expensive.
Deliverables
CoSORT shipped with several interfaces and run time capabilities
including: SortCL (sort control language); sorti - an interactive
sort parm generation program, support for API calls; and, replacements
for common sort commands from various packages and even the UNIX
sort command.
Vendor Support
The CoSORT support staff has been helpful and competent when called
upon. We find its programs to be very easy to use and well documented;
this has all but eliminated the need for additional support.
Documentation
CoSORT shipped with a very good Adobe Acrobat manual, which includes
many helpful sample job scripts. UNIX man pages for each interface
and utility were also provided.
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