NEW YORK – Sometimes we have no choice but to boil the ocean. Investigative professionals who are looking for a missing child or medical researchers trying to discover a cure for a disease, for example, need to know that they are taking in and synthesizing all relevant data to quickly arrive at actionable next steps.

Big data companies like Thomson Reuters not only help customers manage large volumes of information, but they also need to manage multiple ecosystems of their own data and allow key information on disparate systems to be able to come together to form meaningful patterns and create more complete pictures around critical activities. And, according to Thomson Reuters Chief Technology Officer James Powell, that can be difficult.

But not as difficult today as it was a year ago. Last year, Thomson Reuters developed a unique strategic relationship with 4DD Software, guiding and underwriting new product development on 4DD’s flexible technology platform. Thomson Reuters provides financial support, plus executive expertise, bench strength and market presence, and 4DD brings agility and its breakthrough technology platform that is uniquely able to marry, manage and make sense of large, disparate data sets, and also allowing Thomson Reuters and its businesses to improve their technology processes and reduce loads on their servers.

4DD enables Thomson Reuters to create modifiable and reusable enterprise-ready apps that can infuse data with business logic and integrate it with other information. For example, a customer could provide data in a variety of information formats and integrate it with content from external networked sources, such as data in a Thomson Reuters product. The 4DD process can be programmed to compare data, translate from multiple languages, analyze and sort. And a process that is useful against one set of data can be quickly modified for similar use against other sets of data.

“The process is called waterfall searching,” said Powell. “It’s quick and format-agnostic, and doesn’t require database administrators to operate.” Thomson Reuters customers are already reaping the benefits of the company’s relationship with 4DD. And behind the scenes, 4DD is helping Thomson Reuters manage its proprietary data sets so they can be more interactive with one another.

Thomson Reuters has many customers with massive amounts of data – think government agencies, banks, academic institutions and large law firms. 4DD can help institutions better understand their data and also can help make that data more powerful by comparing it to other data sets. For example, consider the data integration difficulties that often accompany bringing two institutions together. 4DD could translate digital records or documents from an acquired institution into the format of another.

“It’s exciting to be working with Thomson Reuters,” said Bennett McPhatter, CEO, 4DD Software. “They have exceptional technology and unrivaled data. This important strategic partnership validates how 4DD technology can be successfully applied against the largest and most complex big data environments and in service to Thomson Reuters customers.”

“Our customers have more than enough data at their disposal,” Powell said. “The issue is that relevant sets of data couldn’t be combined or compared. With 4DD, we can ask each data set in its own language what we want from it, and we can move results down a pipeline, culling out the unnecessary and irrelevant. The flexible federated technology at the heart of 4DD solves a critical business problem for our customers and for us.”

Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters is the world's leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals. We combine industry expertise with innovative technology to deliver critical information to leading decision makers in the financial and risk, legal, tax and accounting, intellectual property and science and media markets, powered by the world's most trusted news organization. With headquarters in New York and major operations in London and Eagan, Minnesota, Thomson Reuters employs approximately 60,000 people and operates in over 100 countries. For more information, go to http://thomsonreuters.com.

4DD Software

4DD Software delivers TETRA Platform™ products and solutions engineered to solve complex and large-scale data problems. We provide TETRA EP™ as an integrated product suite for the enterprise enabling normally complex and expensive solutions to be delivered more quickly and at a reduced cost. Reusable TETRA Apps lower risk, increase return on investment, and greatly increase productivity.