Other members of the Business Intelligence Network have already commented on Informatica's proposed acquisition of Similarity Systems and so I won't replicate their views here. This acquisition does, however, demonstrate the move by the original ETL vendors toward a complete enterprise-wide data integration platform that supports ETL, EII, integration with EAI technology, metadata management, and data profiling and data quality tools. The Similarity acquisition fills out the data profiling and data quality component of this platform for Informatica.
The direction by the main data integration vendors toward a complete enterprise data integration platform will make it difficult for third-party vendors that focus on one aspect of the technology stack to survive, and so we can expect more product consolidation in this segment of the marketplace.
One interesting aspect of the Similarity Systems acquisition for me lies in its AXIO Suite. This product was acquired from Evoke Software, whose technology in turn evolved from various data profiling and data modeling product development and research efforts. This evolution can be traced back many years to DB Software, which was a CASE company founded in 1990 by Dr. Dina Bitton.
As a matter of interest Dina Bitton was, until recently, CTO of Callixa, a company that provides a high-performance EII-like capability known as the Virtual Information Grid. A tragedy befell the company four years ago. On Sept. 11, 2001, Callixa was preparing a product launch in the World Trade Center in New York. At least three of its senior staff were killed in the terrorist attacks, and as a result the company closed its doors for a while and then sought a buyer. Callixa was acquired by SAP last December, and Dina is now an SAP Vice President. After 15 years, its nice to see her excellent research and development work being used by mainstream companies like Informatica and SAP.
Posted January 31, 2006 5:08 PM
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