Introduction
In Q4 of 2006, Informatica, a Redwood City, California-based leading provider of data integration software, announced its acquisition of Itemfield, makers of Conversion Agent. This acquisition will enable Informatica to offer its customers the most comprehensive data integration platform available today. Informatica will continue to support and further develop Itemfield's Conversion Agent offerings for SAP. And, in the coming months, Conversion Agent customers can look forward to realizing important benefits from the integration of Informatica and Itemfield R&D, support, and field operations. One immediate benefit will be the ability to leverage Informatica’s leading WW support and developer network, with over 15,000 members in 30 countries.
Conversion Agent Highlights
Conversion Agent automates the conversion and integration of unstructured data into SAP applications, including content authored using personal productivity products such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat. Over 80% of data within enterprises is estimated to be in a broad array of such unstructured formats, including Microsoft Word and Excel as well as Adobe PDF file formats.
Near-Universal Access to Unstructured Data
Conversion Agent enables near-universal access to unstructured and semi-structured data without requiring any custom programming. Conversion Agent includes built-in support for unstructured data authored using Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat, Postscript, PCL, SUN StarOffice, AFP and HTML. With the combination of SAP NetWeaver Process Integration and Conversion Agent technology enables customers to automate the entire data integration lifecycle to access, discover, cleanse, integrate all their data – unstructured, semi-structured and structured – into SAP core applications.
B2B or Cross-Enterprise Data Exchange
Today’s inter-connected business environment requires enterprises to exchange data with customers, suppliers and partners. To facilitate data exchange, industry-specific standards bodies have established data formats such as SWIFT, NACHA, ACORD, HIPAA and HL7. Effective data exchange between enterprises requires flexible support for multiple versions and variants of these data formats. Based on a unique meta-parser technology, Conversion Agent delivers an adaptable environment to best address these requirements.Over 150 customers use Conversion Agent technology to access and integrate unstructured and semi-structured data. These customers include American Airlines; leading financial institution Natexis Bank; and healthcare IT services company, McKesson.
More information
...can be found in this SAP Conversion overview presentation.
Credits
I like to thank Anne Kiefer (info development for SAP) as well as Joe Schwartz from Informatica for their contribution for this blog and the presentation above.
