SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA , March 15th 2010 -  Silwood Technology Ltd and Gavilan Research announce results of 2010 Data Management Survey.

Global 5000 Companies Continue to Struggle with ERP/CRM Application Implementations.

Silwood Technology Ltd., a leading provider of data management & metadata management tools for supporting ERP/CRM applications, and Gavilan Research Associates, an independent research firm that investigates data management & metadata management practices, have recently completed an important research study.  The 2010 study, conducted in February and March, focused on the implementation challenges of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications (such as SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems (such as Oracle, Siebel and salesforce.com).

The IT landscape for Global 5000 companies has been transformed over the last 10-15 years by the widespread adoption of ERP/CRM packages.  A key hope was that ERP/CRM packages would resolve many of the long standing, enterprise-level data management issues that had built up from using/maintaining multiple legacy applications.

The 2010 study asked Global 5000 companies about the extent of any changes, and about any increase or decrease in effectiveness that has occurred in data management practices as a result of the adoption of application packages. The study sought to elicit the views of practitioners as to the tools, techniques and methods that could enhance the role of data/metadata management in improving the quality of data and application development, in both the package era and beyond.

"61% of respondents reported that they struggle with maintaining a complex mix of both ERP/CRM packages and legacy systems within their corporate environment" said Graham Simpson, Managing Director at Silwood Technology.   "38% of respondents reported that the use of ERP/CRM packages has increased the complexity of their data & systems landscape, and 35% of respondents reported that deriving data models from ERP/CRM systems is difficult and time consuming."

"There was a short timeframe for Global 5000 companies to respond, but we received 80+ validated survey responses" said Stu Carty, President of Gavilan Research.  "It was interesting to see the specific data management issues that Global 5000 companies continue to be challenged by.  56% of all respondents reported that the Data Management function is viewed as an essential corporate resource, and 75% of respondents reported that they continue to struggle with understanding business data definitions."

The results of the study have been summarized into a comprehensive whitepaper that can be purchased from either Silwood or Gavilan for US 5.  For a limited time, interested parties can obtain a free copy of this whitepaper by contacting either company.

To view the non-summarized survey results visit: http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07e2qlu7dsg5ss9wxd/results

For a limited time - the Survey is still open to interested participants.  To participate - visit:  http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07e2qlu7dsg5ss9wxd/start

About Silwood Technology

Silwood Technology (www.silwoodtechnology.com), located in Berkshire, UK is an established software provider in the data management and metadata management space.   Since 1992 Silwood has offered data modeling and metadata management tools & solutions to meet the changing development demands of Global enterprise customers.  Silwood Technology's SAPHIR(tm) product is the leading product available today for understanding the complex data structures of SAP, JD Edwards, Oracle's E-Business Suite, Siebel, and PeopleSoft applications.  For more information about Silwood Technology, contact Sue Edwards (sedwards@silwoodtechnology.com)

About Gavilan Research Associates

Gavilan Research Associates (www.gavilanresearch.net), located in San Francisco, CA is an expert consulting firm that helps companies to evaluate and select enterprise technology solutions.  GRA is the world's foremost authority on metadata management applications and vendor/product research.  GRA is objective and vendor-neutral.  For more information about Gavilan Research contact Stu Carty at +1-925-855-7400 / scarty@gavsys.com.

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