Trillium Software System v13 and TrilliumApps

Trillium Software System v13 was released on September 13th (no superstition there then). I was pre-briefed on it but at the same time I was also pre-briefed on the release of TrilliumApps. As I thought (and continue to think) that TrilliumApps is a very significant development, I decided to wait to comment on both of them until TrilliumApps was formally released, which it just has been.

The main focus of Trillium Software System v13 (TSS v13) is on business users, with features designed to support the more collaborative capabilities that are required in data governance and information quality environments (amongst others): for example, there is a greater emphasis on workflow in this release and the user interface now includes role-based toolbars. Other new capabilities include the ability to exchange rules between the data profiling and data cleansing aspects of the suite and the integration of Global Address (which Trillium Software acquired) capabilities into the software, including the provision of longitude and latitude geo-coding information across some 240 countries.

However, it is on TrilliumApps that I want to focus. The apps in question are pre-built functions, rules, validation checks, workflows and even complete processes that users can download free of charge from the TrilliumApps web site and snap directly into their Trillium Software environment.

As I see it, there are two reasons why this is important. First, it will allow new users to become more productive more quickly and secondly, it will allow existing users to more efficiently move into new areas. This is particularly important when it comes to new areas of compliance, for example.

There are also two reasons why this is good from a marketing perspective for Trillium Software. In the first instance it makes users more productive and therefore should help with Trillium’s sales efforts, because you get reduced time to value, lower cost of ownership and so on. Secondly, one of the ways to search TrilliumApps is by industry vertical and I expect, as more and more apps are developed, that many of these will have an increasingly vertical focus, such as specific rules relevant to banks or insurance companies. Some of Trillium’s competitors have focused on providing specific domain capabilities out of the box but TrilliumApps should effectively counter this approach. Moreover, as far as I am aware Trillium Software is the first and only non-open source vendor to offer this sort of functionality for free.

Perhaps most interesting is what impact this has on the market in general. Clearly the open source market has a similar strategy and it would appear that Trillium Software has taken a leaf out of their book. I think this is very good move and it could change the face of the proprietary software market, not just for data quality but more widely, if this is seen to be a successful approach. I expect it will be and I therefore anticipate that we will see more of it. I would expect (proprietary) data integration vendors, for example, to start to take the same approach. This will be good for users as well as being good for Trillium and anybody that follows in their footsteps.