Group 1's Sagent Data Flow is likely to be particularly appealing to the mid-market, and for departmental solutions within larger organisations. The fact that it is both easy to use and can provide business intelligence capabilities without complex additional requirements (such as a data warehouse) should be especially attractive. Moreover, the fact that this business intelligence can address heterogeneous operational data sources from within the same environment is a significant differentiator.

At the enterprise level, the business intelligence capabilities of Sagent Data Flow are less likely to be of interest because of existing investments. Nevertheless, the ability to present data as part of the data integration exercise will still be useful in ensuring a smooth implementation. However, it is the combination of data movement and federation (ETL and EII) in a single platform that is likely to be of most interest to this market. Few, if any, other vendors have a product that spans this space and it is obviously a significant advantage to be able to do both of these things from a single platform.