Foundation, from Inmon Data Systems (IDS), is a revolutionary tool for helping organizations manage and transform the masses of unstructured data into useful business intelligence. Corporations as well as government agencies are now aware that the data in unstructured systems can be extremely valuable if it is accessed and managed correctly.

In the past, organizations have made their decisions from information retained in their Databases, Data Warehouses – the structured environment. However, industry analysts such as Gartner Group and IDC estimate that over 80 percent of corporate data can be considered ‘unstructured. This unstructured data includes emails, voicemails, search engines, Microsoft suite (Excel, PowerPoint and Word) and many other formats that are not kept in traditional database systems.

Until IDS announced the Foundation product, much of this data was only useful inside the application in which it was created. Foundation has solved this problem by giving you the tool to access, transform and utilize all types of unstructured data, including documents, scanned images, email, web sites and reports. Most important, Foundation gives you the ability to bridge the gap between the structured and unstructured worlds and to utilize the wealth of your unstructured data to make important business decisions.

Uses for IDS Foundation

Foundation has many important applications in corporate and public sector organizations, including:

• Market research for industries such as medical, pharmaceutical, insurance and finance.
• Creation of “hotwire” files to alert organizations when emergency or competitive situations exist.
• Compliance, Sarbanes Oxley, and litigation discovery support
• Support of manufacturing and supply chain management processes
• Creating a true 360 degree view of the customer for customer cross selling, prospecting and long-term relationship building.
• Unstructured customer contact files of every contact or customer communication, including emails, letters, and other documents.
• Email analysis and management.
• Risk Management
• Outcome Analysis

Foundation Features

Extracts, transforms and loads (ETL) data from multiple unstructured data sources

Utilizes your existing relational database system

Minimizes training and administration costs by using existing systems

Brings structured and unstructured data into one complete system

Gives you the ability to combine and integrate text and numeric data

Provides self organizing maps (SOMs) to help you visualize unstructured data

Tracks unknown variables that can impact your business

For an in-depth discussion of the benefits of combining structured and unstructured data click here.