IBM adds DataMirror to its Information Server

IBM's recent acquisition of Business Intelligence vendor DataMirror continues the recent trend of SOA consolidation, giving Big Blue access to new real-time data replication capabilities.

In the short term, the acquisition will mean little for either IBM or DataMirror customers, as IBM says that it will continue to sell DataMirror's Transformation Server. Indeed, IBM already re-sold DataMirror products, so many customers will notice no change at all. The reseller agreement also means that IBM accounted for a large portion of DataMirror's business and so had a good insight into the smaller vendor's technology and revenues.

In the long term, the acquisition will allow IBM to integrate DataMirror's technology more deeply into its own, and likely go beyond DataMirror's core focus on mid-market of business intelligence (BI) to SOA, Master Data Management (MDM.) IBM has already said that the DataMirror technology will be mixed with IBM's Information Server, a data integration product that it acquired with Ascential.

DataMirror also had partnerships with many of IBM's competitors, including BEA, Microsoft and Oracle. Though IBM says that these will continue, the other vendors will clearly will be looking for alternatives. But their choices are rapidly narrowing: Spotfire, Cartesis and Hyperion were acquired earlier this year by Tibco, Business Objects and Oracle respectively, leaving SeaTab, Initiate Systems and FirstRain among the independent competitors.