On Monday, IBM announced its intent to acquire all of the outstanding shares of DataMirror for $161 million. The deal, which is subject to approvals and other closing conditions, is expected to close in the third quarter.
Based in Markham, Ontario, DataMirror developed technology that IBM already uses under a partnership for helping Big Blue's customers identify and capture business information even as data  is added, updated, or deleted across an enterprise network . The changes are identified in real-time so key decision-makers can better understand what's transpiring.
"What the DataMirror acquisition does is give IBM another arrow in its quiver to go after customers on the business intelligence side," said Ian Finley, research director at AMR Research. "It allows them to build on what they got when they bought Ascential Software a couple of years back."
Production-System Safe
DataMirror's changed data capture (CDC) technology is designed to minimize the impact of data requests by not querying databases. Instead, the software combs through log files for the latest data, explained Rob Karel, principal analyst at Forrester Research. "Businesses can't afford for their production systems to take a significant performance hit," Karel said.
"Because DataMirror is only pulling information from these log files, there is minimal impact on the production system ," Karel noted. The size of the log files are minimal because they only tell users what was updated since the previous poll, "which makes for a smaller set of data that can be configured to change as often as you want."
DataMirror's technology can be configured to trigger critical business decisions and events. "Basically, you can configure the technology so that when an event happens -- a product is purchased or a customer calls in -- you can send that data to whatever target systems need to know it," Karel said.
Ten years ago, business managers were content to have accurate quarterly reports, AMR Research's Finley explained, and five years ago their needs were fulfilled by monthly or weekly reports. By purchasing DataMirror, he said, IBM will be able to "move up the graph from Ascential's translate-and-load data capability to offer real-time, up-to-the-minute analysis." (continued...)
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