Tamr Opens Public Beta Program for Its Free Enterprise Metadata Catalog

CIOs/CDOs, business analysts, data scientists can organize, discover and communicate their data assets, ending the Dark Data Era

The free standalone version of Tamr Catalog, available today via a new public Beta program, makes it easier and faster for people to find all the relevant data sets they need for their analytics – not just the ones known by them or closest to them.

Cambridge, Mass., September 24, 2015 – Tamr, Inc., today opened the public Beta program for an enterprise metadata catalog that simplifies access to high-quality data sets for analytics. The Tamr Catalog Beta is available as a lightweight app for download at https://www.tamr.com/catalog-preview beginning today. Tamr Catalog, one component of the larger Tamr Data Unification Platform, is now being offered as a free standalone download to encourage broad adoption of vendor- and platform-neutral metadata cataloging ─ the first step in bringing enterprise dark data into the light of the analytical, data-driven enterprise.

Over the last several months, more than 300 early Beta testers have worked with Tamr to enrich and refine Tamr Catalog. The public Beta version is lightweight, social and extensible. Anyone ─ from Chief Data Officers (CDOs) to data architects to business analysts ─ can download the app and start registering and collaborating on their data sets.

Tamr Catalog gives organizations a better way to discover, organize and communicate about their data assets, many of which are considered “dark data,” or data that’s been processed and stored but is not often used. Traditional top-down methods of cataloging or “master data management” are fragmented, arduous and not scalable to organizations’ data variety or analytic demands.

“The CFO can tell you specifically where all the company’s financial assets are, but the CIO or CDO cannot tell you where all the company’s data assets are,” said Nidhi Aggarwal, Global Head of Strategy, Operations and Marketing for Tamr. “Tamr collapses and socializes the process of finding enterprise data, regardless of type, platform or source. It uses our machine-driven, human-guided approach to make this process efficient and scalable.

“With Tamr’s approach to cataloging, an organization can quickly inventory and share the information about the data that exists and its associated human knowledge. Tamr brings data curation close to the source of data: data creators and users,” Nidhi Aggarwal said.

Tamr’s enterprise metadata catalog:

Creates an inventory of data sources, including metadata about who owns the source, what tags have been applied to it, and profiling metrics about its tables and attributes.

Documents different kinds of data sources, not just sources from particular vendors, as well as the people who might be associated with those sources. Organizations can share centralized repositories of metadata and the institutional knowledge that clusters around it.

Enables people to register, search, filter and tag their sources, while also associating sources with the analytic questions they need to ask and the applications they need to answer those questions. The result is richer, more ready-to-use data for everyone.

Provides a visual representation of related sources ─ to help determine which data to curate, unify and prepare for any analysis.

“Our clients need to ask and answer big questions of their data. The first step is knowing what data you have and what it represents,” said Steve Morin, Managing Partner and CTO of Big Data consultancy Nvent. “Tools like Tamr Catalog give us a simple, fast approach to finding and cataloging data across the full range of our clients’ data sources, regardless of the underlying platforms. We’re looking forward to seeing how Tamr Catalog evolves and how it can help our clients make smarter decisions faster.”

Anyone with a relationship to the data can benefit from Tamr’s enterprise metadata catalog:

CDOs and data architects can see and understand the organization’s data assets ─ from the number of data sources to the content of an individual data source ─ so they can more easily manage ontologies (relationships) and logical models (entity types).

Business analysts can enrich their analyses with additional, easily discoverable sources of relevant data, because they know the location and quality of all data sources and who owns them ─ not just the sources known or closest to them.

Data stewards can determine the state of data sources ─ for example, utilization rates and duplication levels ─ and converse easily about the data with business people to continually improve the value of enterprise data.

Tamr has launched a new online community where Tamr catalog users can comment, interact directly with the development team, and learn more about the software; and where developers can explore extending the tool by creating new data connectors.

Tamr will be demonstrating its free, standalone catalog offering at Strata + Hadoop World in New York September 29 through October 1 at Booth #131.

About Tamr, Inc.

Tamr, Inc., catalogs, connects and curates the vast reserves of underutilized internal and external data using a human-guided machine learning approach, so enterprises can use all relevant data for analytics. Tamr was founded in 2013 by big-data serial entrepreneurs Andy Palmer and Michael Stonebraker, who previously co-founded Vertica Systems (acquired by HP); Ihab Ilyas of the University of Waterloo; George Beskales; Daniel Bruckner; and Alex Pagan.