Melissa Data Expands Big Data Quality Services to U.K.

Melissa Data, a data-quality vendor with promising prospects at the convergence of Big Data and cloud computing, has expanded its international presence, announcing the opening of a London office this week. It has also added a new executive to the team, Barley Laing, to oversee the company’s U.K. operations.

Melissa Data’s focus is on data quality, especially for contact information—which means things such as physical and email addresses and telephone numbers. Its flagship product, Global Data Quality Suite, ensures that contact information is accurate, an attractive value-added feature as databases of contact information grow larger and larger.

The company, which is based in California and previously added international branches in Germany and India, described the opening of a London location as a vital part of its strategy for continued growth. It also “enables local sales and support for a global clientele,” according to a statement.

Barley Lang will direct Melissa Data’s operations in London. He served most recently as CEO of World Address. He has also filled executive sales and engineering roles at BT, ADC Telecommunications, Shell and Xerox, and worked in the British government’s Department of Trade and Industry as well.

Data quality is an important subset of the Big Data market, since collecting huge amounts of information (and making it conveniently accessible in the cloud) is only worthwhile if the information is free of errors, redundancies and other problems. With a partner program aimed at IT professionals and partnerships with companies such as Talend, the open source Big Data vendor, Melissa Data is in a good position for continued growth.