MetaMatrix is a provider of federated data services and metadata management software. As such it competes with data integration products, especially those that provide federated EII capabilities. Red Hat intends to open source MetaMatrix software and blend it in with its JBoss application platform.

It is the integration with JBoss that identifies the reasons behind the acquisition. Red Hat was badly hurt financially by last year's Oracle announcement that it would provide its own support for Red Hat Linux. Red Hat, therefore, needed to improve revenue by other means. Red Hat competitors like BEA, IBM and Oracle are extending their application platforms with support for SOA, web services, enterprise data integration services, and in some cases BI capabilities. To remain competitive, Red Hat has to keep improving its application platform in-line with the competition, hence the acquisition of MetaMatrix's data integration capabilities.

The MetaMatrix acquisition leave few stand alone EII vendors in the market. The most well known of these is Composite Software. The acquisition removes one of Composite's competitors, but the question is, "Will Composite be next in-line for acquisition?" Given Composite's history to date I think it would firmly resist any attempt at acquisition, but given the incredible growth of the BI industry of late anything is possible!