Syniti boosts DataOps chops with DMR merger

Enterprise data management vendors Syniti and Data Migration Resources said on May 4 that the two firms will merge. Financial terms of the deal have not been publicly disclosed.

Syniti, based in Boston, has been in an ongoing transformation in recent years, rebranding from BackOffice Associates in 2019 and appointing Kevin Campbell as CEO the same year. DMR is based in Mission, Kan., and has a data strategy and migration business that will complement and extend the Syniti product portfolio.

Among the products and services that the merged company, which will be known as Syniti, will offer are a series of data quality, data governance and master data management capabilities. The overall platform offering is aimed at enabling data operations (DataOps) for organizations.

In this Q&A, Kevin Campbell, CEO of Syniti, discusses why his company is now merging with DMR and details the challenges and opportunities of the data quality business.

Why is Syniti merging with DMR?

Kevin Campbell

Kevin Campbell: DMR is like us. All we do is data. All they do is data. So what we talked about was trying to combine together so that we didn't compete with each other.

The data market has a lot of players in it and is growing fast. We think there's some natural connections between us and we think there are neutral inflection points where the combination together grows up faster. DMR also has a Latin America presence, which we didn't have. They were starting to grow in Asia, Pacific and Europe, but have minimal practices. So now in combination, we're instantly global.

DMR is like us. All we do is data. All they do is data. So what we talked about was trying to combine together so that we didn't compete with each other.

We both have data migration software, and so we will take the best of the best from each as we go forward.

Do you define Syniti as a data intelligence vendor or is it more about DataOps?

Campbell: DataOps is probably more of the right term.

We do data strategy work and data transformation work. Data operations is about

getting the data clean, keeping it clean, getting it governed well, and then being able to replicate it, or get it out the other places where you can use it.

How do you define data quality?

Campbell: It's about deduplication, freshness and data trust. It's also about governance.

It's about harmonization and all the things that are needed to get a single source of truth about a customer.

When you think about it, at the root of almost every problem is the data quality problem. For example, when it's an organization that can't drive enough revenue through its sales force, they're always going to complain that they don't have the right customer information, or it's not integrated with marketing.

How does data quality and governance enable DataOps and improved business outcomes?

Campbell: A lot of people will say, dump all your data into a system or a data lake and then you can report from there, adding in security and governance. I call that an outside-in approach. I've been in this business 30 years, and I've watched that come and go and it doesn't work.

What works is fixing it from the inside. So you got to go to transaction systems and make sure the quality is right. The Syniti platform facilitates you getting and maintaining the level of quality you need and it also facilitates the governance of those data elements.

So one of the big benefits of data quality and putting in our platform, for example, is expediting product introductions.

We don't do anything in the design area or product innovation area. What we do is allow data to get governed and into all the rest of the systems that drive the engineering, manufacturing and support of products. Shortening that time, from the time you have the idea to the time you can execute and deliver to your customers, requires coordination and governance.

Editor's note: This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.