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SMU Gives High Marks To Ascential Software

Ascential Software Corp announced that Southern Methodist University (SMU), a private university based in Dallas, is using Ascential DataStage as the enterprise data integration platform for its PeopleSoft EPM implementation. Ascential Software is helping the university streamline and accelerate the data extraction process in an effort to cut costs and improve staff and faculty access to administrative and student decision support systems.

With more than 11,000 students, the university needs to track a variety of historical data including information for student reporting, human resources, administration, development and budgeting. For example, SMU keeps track of census data monitoring certain key points in the academic calendar over a ten- year period. "Our main goal was to give SMU's faculty and staff the ability to make better, faster decisions based on the data available," said Joe Gargiulo, director of software applications at SMU. "We needed a way to 'free the data' so that it was more useable and easier to get exactly what each department required. Our team was able to accomplish this very quickly, in part, because the Ascential Software solution integrated seamlessly with our PeopleSoft application."

SMU's IT infrastructure is based on PeopleSoft EPM, but also includes Oracle databases, Sun Solaris systems and Windows 2000 applications servers, creating an environment where the integration of clean and consistent data is critical. Ascential Software's ability to cleanse, standardize and transform the data enables tightly integrated enterprise information, regardless of the sources, targets and time frames, essential for the university's on-going software strategy and integration initiatives.

"SMU's IT department has been charged with the challenge of providing end- users with an effective way to access data residing in a number of disparate sources across the enterprise," said Mark Register, chief marketing officer and vice president of marketing, industry solutions and global alliances for Ascential Software. "We've been able to help SMU build an integration infrastructure that meets their needs and gives staff and faculty more direct access to the data that are important to them."

The Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite is a comprehensive data integration solution that profiles, cleanses, and transforms data from virtually any application or system regardless of data volume or latency. Ascential Software's integrated offering is designed to help companies streamline operations, improve customer support, expedite business transactions, and make better tactical and strategic decisions on the basis of the best available information. The suite provides unlimited scalability through parallel processing, complete meta data management, any-to-any data source and application connectivity, and delivers on demand data integration seamlessly within an enterprise's service-oriented architecture.

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