Dunn & Bradstreet gets into CDI, buys Purisma |
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By Barney Beal, News Director
07 Nov 2007 | SearchDataManagement.com |
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The Dunn & Bradstreet (D&B) Corporation entered the customer data integration market this week, acquiring Purisma Inc. for $48 million.
The Short Hills, N.J.-based provider of business information, services and research is extending into software as part of a mission outlined by the company's president a year ago, according to Jim Delaney, senior vice president, global sales and marketing solutions. D&B decided it needed to move beyond its data business and extend into data solutions and customer data integration.
"As we looked at some of our existing product gaps in the Information Manager, there were some concerns from customers about hierarchy management, data governance and data stewardship tools that we did not have in our product set," Delaney said.
D&B entered a partnership with Redwood City, Calif.-based Purisma last year to bring its customers those functions, and that ultimately led to yesterday's acquisition.
"The feedback and the response we got, and how it fit hand in glove with our data, made for a nice story and a nice solution," Delaney said.
Many of Purisma's customers already use D&B's DUNSRight data quality offering, which aggregates and verifies data from multiple sources. Purisma's Data Hub will ease integration between D&B and internal systems. It will also sit behind a customer's firewall, a feature that D&B could not offer previously.
The acquisition was announced during D&B's third quarter earnings call Monday and tucked into the bottom of the press release.
As with other acquisitions, Purisma will continue to operate as a standalone business and report in to D&B's chief marketing officer, Delaney said.
"One of the things that CDI is trying to address is the fact that data is fragmented in the enterprise. The other challenge is keeping that up to date and current," said Bob Hagenau, co-founder and vice president of products for Purisma. "D&B tracks millions of changes to its database on a daily basis. Being able to take that marketing information and integrate that will help to make that data come alive and make that a living business asset."
Executives did not reveal future plans for the Purisma product set.
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