New Apatar Connector Helps Companies to Easily Clean Customer Data Before It Enters CRM/ERP Systems, Databases, Flat Files, and RSS Feeds, All Without Coding

January 21, 2008, Chicopee, MA - Apatar, Inc., the leading provider of open source software tools for the data integration market, today officially announced StrikeIron Email Verification connector for the Apatar Open Source Data Integration toolset. The new feature is designed to instantly determine the validity of an e-mail address or domain using StrikeIron Web Services.

Now Apatar enables its users to easily cleanse customer data by validating and filtering e-mails extracted from databases (such as MySQL, Microsoft SQL, Oracle), files (Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, CSV/TXT files), applications (Salesforce.com, SugarCRM), and the top Web 2.0 destinations (Flickr, Amazon S3, RSS feeds).

Improving customer data quality

52 percent of organizations consider the “verification of data accuracy or completeness” to be one of the biggest customer data management challenges, according to Aberdeen Group research. As a response to this demand, StrikeIron Email Verification service allows users to instantly determine the validity of an e-mail address or domain, reduce spam by blocking e-mails that are sent from invalid e-mail addresses, and ensure that e-mail addresses are validated before they are entered into a database or before a mailing is sent.

“Business users are starving for reliable customer information,” said Renat Khasanshyn, CEO and founder of Apatar. “E-mail verification will allow filtering contacts before they enter your on-premises or on-demand CRM/ERP system, such as SalesForce.com or SugarCRM. Having customer data clean and consistent will help marketing and sales departments improve decision-making and consolidate their efforts on the most promising prospects.”

No coding!

According to The Gartner Group, corporate developers spend approximately 65 percent of their effort building bridges between applications. Apatar is the first company to release open source tools for non-technical staff and customers to access the application data they need to do their jobs more effectively. With Apatar’s visual toolset, business users can perform even a complex data integration job without having to write a single line of a code.

“Email Verification Web service reduces the time wasted on processing the bad leads,” said Bob Brauer, CEO and President of StrikeIron. “Delivered directly into the intuitive Apatar application, StrikeIron’s Email Verification connector enables users to easily integrate customer data with corporate CRM/ERP applications, websites, databases, files, and interactive services without custom coding.”

Related links

E-mail verification Web demo: http://www.apatar.com/demo/web_demo_6/Demo_Apatar_StrikeIron_Email_Verification.htm

E-mail verification user guide: http://apatarforge.org/wiki/display/DQS/StrikeIron+Email+Verification

Pre-created DataMap: http://www.apatarforge.org/remository/business-productivity/verify-e-mails-extracted-from-salesforce.com-contacts-and-save-to-.csv-files.html

Pricing

Apatar Open Source is available for free download at www.apatar.com. Commercial support and maintenance subscription packages start at $1,900 per year. StrikeIron Email Verification and Address Verification Web services are available for subscription from StrikeIron.

Apatar Open Source Data Integration features and benefits:

- Improve data quality
- Reduce integration and maintenance costs, shorten implementation time
- No coding! Visual job designer and mapping enable non-developers to design and perform transformations
- Users have the ability to create, publish, share, and re-use data transformations and output to RSS feeds by monitoring keywords and URLs for both internal and external systems
- Connectivity to Oracle, MS SQL, MySQL, Sybase, Microsoft Access, PostgreSQL, InstantDB, BorlandJDataStore, Csv, Qed, HSQL, Compiere ERP, SalesForce.Com, SugarCRM, GoldMine, Microsoft Excel, XML, RSS, ATOM, FTP, POP3, LDAP, WebDav, Autodesk Buzzsaw, any JDBC data sources, Amazon S3, and Flickr
- Job scheduler and synchronization
- Platform-independent, runs from Windows, Linux; 100% Java- based

StrikeIron Email Verification features and benefits:

- Instantly verifies bad e-mail addresses and invalid domains
- Reduces spam by blocking e-mail from invalid e-mail addresses
- Checks the validity of an e-mail address before it enters a database
- Connects in real-time to the e-mail owner’s SMTP server to validate an address without sending an e-mail
- Reduces costs associated with marketing to prospects with non-existent e-mail addresses
- Reduces server bandwidth

About Apatar

Apatar is the leading provider of open source software tools for the data integration market. With powerful Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) capabilities, Apatar enables its users to easily link information between databases (such as MySQL, Microsoft SQL, Oracle), applications (Salesforce.com, SugarCRM), and the top Web 2.0 destinations (Flickr, Amazon S3). Apatar provides support, training, and consulting services for its integration solutions. Headquartered in Western Massachusetts, Apatar operates a development center in Minsk, Belarus. Apatar is currently used by 250 organizations and individuals worldwide. For more on Apatar, please visit www.apatar.com and www.apatarforge.org. More information is available at Apatar’s Online Press Room.

About StrikeIron

StrikeIron is the leader in Data as a Service (DaaS), facilitating the consumption and distribution of live data and business functionality over the Web. The company’s innovative Web Services Marketplace provides a technology platform, micro-transaction management, and a consistent interface across many XML-based Web services from multiple, diverse sources. This allows business users, application developers, and enterprise IT professionals to customize and integrate external data sources and additional external functionality into enterprise, Web, and composite applications. Currently, StrikeIron provides over 100 live data sources and business functions from organizations such as D&B, Zacks, MapQuest, Cdyne, Xignite, YP.com, and IDExec. StrikeIron also offers a set of products and tools to simplify and accelerate the consumption of data, such as its SOA Express for Excel, enabling business users to access live data via front office applications. StrikeIron delivers value to over 1,000 customers and partners such as BEA, Delivery.com, IBM, Honda Europe, D&B, Time Warner, Siemens, Nike, Kenwood, and Exclusive Resorts. For more information, visit www.strikeiron.com.