IBM buys in-memory database company Solid
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InfoWorld - IBM is buying Solid Information Technology, a maker of high-performance databases and a close partner of IBM rival MySQL.
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Looking to grab some momentum and market share from rivals EMC and Hewlett-Packard, IBM took the wraps off a new, midrange storage offering that--in a 3U form factor&quot;-could scale up to 67 terabytes.
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IBM Corp. has agreed to buy Montreal software developer Systemcorp ALG for an undisclosed sum, the companies said Tuesday.
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IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it has completed its acquisition of Softek Storage Solutions Corporation, a privately held company based in Vienna, Virginia.
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With its latest storage vendor acquisition, IBM obtains Nextra, a hardware storage area network system.
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InfoWorld - If you&#39;re in any doubt that flash memory-based solid-state disks are on a course to quickly replace hard-disk drives in laptop computers, just take a look along the aisles of this year&#39;s Computex trade show.
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(InfoWorld) - IBMÂ is looking to add real-time capabilities to its data integration software by buying Canadian firm DataMirrorÂ for about C$170 million (US$162.3 million). The two companies have entered into a definitive agreement for IBM to acquire all outstanding DataMirror common shares for C$27 per share, they announced Monday. IBM's offer represents a premium of 19.4 percent compared with the average trading price of DataMirror's common shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange over the last 20 days. In Monday midmorning trading, DataMirror's shares rose 4.2 percent on the news, up from Friday's close of C$22.50. Subject to shareholder and regulatory approval, the deal is set to close in the third quarter of this year. DataMirror's Transformation Server software identifies and captures data that has been added, updated, or deleted, and it enables the changed information to be delivered in real time to processes, applications, and databases. IBM previously partnered with DataMirror, pointing customers to the vendor whenever they needed heterogenous real-time change data-capture software. However, recently, it became clear that IBM needed to own the technology since more and more of its users required it. "DataMirror's capabilities are very important for our Information on Demand strategy," said Michael Curry, director, product strategy and management, information platform and solutions at IBM. Having the ability to note data changes as they occur and react accordingly is vital for users of dynamic warehouses, master data management, and service-oriented architecture, he added. Information on Demand is designed to give users access to all kinds of data regardless of where it's stored in their enterprises. A key piece of that strategy isÂ Information Server, data integration software IBM released last year, based on technology it acquired through the 2005 $1.1 billion purchase of Ascential. IBM plans to continue offering DataMirror's data integration, auditing, high availability, and data replication software as stand-alone products as well as incorporating them into Information Server, Curry said. "We've already seen very strong traction for Information Server," he added. Acquiring DataMirror is testimony to the fact that the Information Server business is growing so well that IBM continues to invest in the product, Curry said. IBM expects to release a more detailed road map for DataMirror once the acquisition has closed. DataMirror will become part of IBM's Information Management Software unit, which is headed up by Ambuj Goyal. IBM was particularly attracted to DataMirror by its very broad support of different types of data, Curry said. The Canadian vendor provides data integration on Windows, Unix, IBM's System i servers and mainframes and supports databases from IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Sybase. DataMirror also has its own Java database called PointBase. There's no real overlap between DataMirror's technologies and what IBM already has, Curry said. IBM already provides some data capture capabilities but they're limited to its DB2 database. IBM intends to continue DataMirror's partnerships with other vendors, notably BEA Systems, Business Objects, Microsoft, and Oracle. Such relationships are vital to ensure that IBM can be effective in offering heterogenous data integration, Curry said. With its headquarters in Markham, Ontario, DataMirror has around 2,200 customers. IBM hopes to retain all of the firm's 220-plus staff, Curry said.
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To help its customers get a handle on all the data scattered across their enterprises, IBM Thursday announced plans to acquire Venetica, a privately held company that makes content integration software.
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IBM has bought XIV, an Israeli manufacturer of SAN (storage area network) equipment. XIV's main product is Nextra, a storage system based on a grid of standard hardware components.
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NEW YORK--IBM has introduced two new storage products that the company said provides customers with better performance at a lower cost.
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(InfoWorld) - PM (performance management) vendors appear to be universal in their delight at the news that Oracle will buy Hyperion for $3.3 billion. Their pleasure comes mainly from believing that enterprise-level companies do not want to buy a PM solution from an application or database vendor, preferring instead to purchase mission-critical applications like PM from an independent company with domain expertise and a unique understanding of the space. "A Goldman Sachs survey said that over 65 percent of CIOs prefer to purchase their BI and PM applications from an independent vendor," said Michelle Mollot, vice president of market strategy at Cognos. First and foremost, Oracle will have to convince customers that the Hyperion application will not be optimized for the Oracle database environment and rather that it will be optimized for applications that are important to their company, especially because most large companies have a heterogeneous database and application environment that requires a high level of open and ERP-independent software. The last thing a customer wants is performance management to be an accessory to a database or an application, adds Piet Loubser, senior vice president and director of market intelligence at Business Objects. There appears to be universal agreement from Hyperion competitors that performance management must live transversely across all systems in a heterogeneous environment. "You cant afford to have any bias to other applications that might exist in an infrastructure," said Loubser. Trevor Walker, vice president of marketing at Cartesis, a financial consolidation vendor, said that in the foreseeable future, there will be a lack of clarity on applications from Oracle and where they sit on the application roadmap. "It opens up a lot of opportunities," he said. Craig Schiff, president of BPM partners, a vendor-neutral consulting firm that helps companies launch BPM initiatives, says the acquisition will be a significant challenge for Oracle. "No transactional vendor has been able to sell PM applications. Nobody buys SAPs PM apps," Schiff said. Â The only value Oracle may offer to its customers is integration with its underlying data structure. But Schiff says Hyperion itself is still struggling with integration issues between its own applications, such as financial management, planning, and BI tools. Schiff may know a thing or two about Hyperion as he was the second hire at the company back in the 1980s. While Oracle is spending R&D dollars on integration with ERP, most large companies see the major benefit from single-solution providers in the fact that all of their research and development dollars are focused on PM. "Because PM is a strategic front-office solution with high visibility, it is not an area you compromise on," said Schiff. Not all analysts agree, however. Despite the delight expressed by vendors spoken to for this report, Josh Greenberg, principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting has a different point of view: "Competitors should be worried." According to Greenberg, Hyperion lets Oracle have a conversation with the financial management of a company, the C-level executives. Hyperion plus a big ERP suite can be potentially a lucrative and competitive combination if it can make sense in the context of what Oracle already has. "The trick is integration and assimilation," said Greenberg. Schiff also sees another side to the acquisition, saying it could be a preemptive move before Microsoft unveils Performance Point Server, its PM solution. Schiff says that Microsoft is going to be a big player in the performance space and that IBM may enter the fray as well, picking up Cognos next It is the conclusion of all analysts and vendors in this space that performance management as a separate niche has become extremely mission-critical ever since Sarbanes-Oxley. Up until Sarbanes, the systems for financial management were not effective, and the budget process was too loose, many say.Â  PM is the discipline companies need to apply to reign in risk, notes Cognos' Mollot. It has by default become the new battleground for the hearts and minds of enterprise customers, and that may explain why Oracle made its move. "Application vendors have been able to automate the transaction system phase and now PM becomes the next competitive advantage," said Mollot.
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IBM (NYSE: IBM) has launched a major upgrade of its WebSphere flagship middleware product, adding autonomic troubleshooting capabilities and other new features designed to improve performance in the application-server platform.
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IBM acquires software developer Venetica to pump up the content-handling capabilities of its DB2 platform. By Paul McDougall and Rick Whiting.
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(InfoWorld) - If you're in any doubt that flash memory-based solid-state disks are on a course to quickly replace hard-disk drives in laptop computers, just take a look along the aisles of this year's Computex trade show. Solid-state disks and machines containing them are plentiful at the show, which brings together the world's most important PC manufacturers and component makers with buyers from around the world, and is a good gauge of the direction of the industry. That solid-state disks are replacing hard-disk drives shouldn't come as a total surprise: they're lighter, quieter, use less power and are sturdier than hard drives. The transition is being accelerated by fast price drops in the flash market. For example, an 8GB chip that cost $11.36 at the end of 2006 currently costs $8.47 on the spot market. That's a drop of 25 percent in six months. For example,Â SanDisk debuted its first SSD, a 32GB model, at January's CES but a mere six months on at Computex it's showing a 64GB model. The company says much higher-capacity drives are possible today but will be too expensive for most enterprise users, so it's increasing the capacity of its drives while keeping them at what it considers the sweet-spot of price and storage space. Like SSDs from competitors, the SanDisk drives are offered as drop-in replacements for 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch hard-disk drives and so can be offered by system makers without the need for any modifications. As SSDs become more common the company believes smaller form-factor drives will be used in machines specifically produced for solid-state storage. "The old technology of the hard disk is going to go away from the mobile PC market and be replaced by [solid state] media," said Doreet Oren, director of product marketing at SanDisk's computing solutions division in Israel. Some analysts agree. In a report issued in May, iSuppli said it expects 24 million laptops sold in the fourth quarter of 2009 -- about 60 percent of the anticipated market -- will have flash storage, versus less than 1 percent in the last quarter of 2006. Also on show at Computex is a wide range of solid-state disks intended for the industrial sector. Such drives are targeted at military and aviation applications and began replacing other storage methods several years before their entry into the PC market, thanks to the willingness of such customers to pay higher prices. Apacer TechnologyÂ is demonstrating a 128GB industrial SSD that can replace a 2.5-inch hard drive and operate at temperatures between -40 degrees Celsius and 85 degrees Celsius. It will be available in the fourth quarter, and a second version with double the data read speed of 200MbpsÂ will be available in early 2008. Alongside it was a flash-based RAID (redundant array of independent, or inexpensive, disks) drive which has two Compact Flash card slots. The capacity depends on the cards used. It's not only in the SSD arena that storage advances are on show at Computex. Toshiba has the latest in its line of 1.8-inch hard-disk drives, a model that can store 100GB, on show. The drive can be fitted into portable media devices, like the iPod, or ultra portable PCs. Toshiba is also using Computex toÂ unveil its first HD DVD rewriter driveÂ for laptop computers. A single-layer HD DVD-RW disc can store up to 20GB of information, which is just overÂ four times the capacity of an equivalent DVD. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has its 1TB drive that was unveiled at CES and new at the show is a 250GB 2.5-inch drive for laptop computers. The 5K250 includes drive-level encryption and has 56 percent more storage space than its predecessor, the 160GB 5K160. Â
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SAN JOSE, Calif. -- IBM has devised a way to triple the amount of memory stored on computer chips and double the performance of data-hungry processors by replacing a problematic type of memory with a variety that uses much less space on the slice of silicon.
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Stockpiles ammunition against EMC and Symantec IBM is bulking up its storage software division by buying privately held storage resource management firm, Novus Consulting Group (NovusCG). Financial terms were not disclosed.â¦
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IBM&#39;s planned purchase of Venetica provides Big Blue with one more piece in its on-demand computing strategy. The challenge will be to seamlessly meld Venetica&#39;s unstructured-data expertise with structured-data management.