Composite Software is not big, but very successful company from California, which has done enough good for software industry. Its achievements were enough for another giant, Cisco, to get interested in acquisition, which - according to press releases - is currently in progress. Up to now, Composite Software offers a wide range of products for multiple data integration uses. These products are Composite Data Virtualization Platform, divided into Composition Information Server, Composite Discovery, and a bunch of adapters, Composite Active Cluster, and Composite Discovery.

Comoposite Software Strengths

• broad capabilities for basic uses
• data federation capabilities
• wide network of partners
• support for connectivity to relational databases
• support for related capabilities

Composite Software data integration products have all the core functions which competitors are praised for, thereupon the opinion of its customers couldn't be any different. However, it's worth to remember that Composite Software is just ten or a little more years old, so many of its solutions are licensed or based on previously-known uses. It's both good and bad, but it still works and the customers seem to be satisfied with this. What's important, cooperation with other software providers has resulted in creating a real worldwide web of partnerships with such a known names as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Infosys, MicroStrategy, Tibco Software and many others.

In opposite to some of its main competitors, Composite Software solution's capabilities aren't limited only to common ETL functions, there is also quite an advanced support for relational databases, flat files, XML, prerelational legacy data types, HDFS, and so on. It's also where the partnership with well known vendors is a meaningful advantage for Composite Software.

Composite Software Weaknesses

• limited breadth of functionality
• limited experience of the vendor
• uneven customer support
• different versions inconsistency

No matter how hard it tries and how many steps forward it has already made, Composite Software still is quite a novice to the market and its position in the software industry is doubted. Moreover, its future is questionable with a strong interest from Cisco. Possible acquisition would definitely be a chance for Composite Software customers to have their data integration solutions more advanced, but - in a consequence - it destroys all the advantage of Composite itself. Customers, who have chosen not famous vendor on purpose, might be disappointed because of the acquisition, but it still is a chance, though. It should improve the already limited breath of functionality. This is what today's customers of Composite Software happen to complain on - beside general virtual federation and bulk/batch data delivery, there is really limited support for other integration styles.

Even though the solution isn't perfect, other complaints apply more to the vendor, not the products themselves. What's often mentioned is limited experience of the provided what makes him understand customer needs a little bit worse than other, more experienced competitors. It results in worsened experience and skill base and - also - in problematical support. However, the customers' opinion on support is differentiated. Some state that there is nothing to complain about, while others say that they haven't learnt anything new nor usable from the company representatives.

Finally, the solution is constantly under the development, vendor still is working on the updates what - beside the improvements - causes difficulties with maintenance and inconsistency between older and newer versions of the software.