IBM says its £580m acquisition of Ascential Software
will give retailers an IBM Websphere alternative to data
integration tools from SAP and Oracle.
The Ascential products offer managed "master repositories" of
business information, which can be accessed on demand from back-end
supply chain systems. This provides a single view of suppliers and
customers, allowing firms to make rapid inventory and pricing
adjustments as demand changes.
Ted Friedman, principal analyst at Gartner Research, said, "The
deal will broaden IBM's integration offerings, giving Websphere
Information Integrator needed data quality functionality in
extraction, transformation and loading, and further complementing
Websphere's process integration offerings."
Bob Mick, vice-president of emerging technology at analyst ARC
Advisory Group, added, "Ascential's strength in high-speed ETL
fills a recognised IBM portfolio weakness, making this a good fit.
Both firms pledged continued support for competitive products and
heterogeneous environments, which should minimise user concerns
about long-term support for non-IBM products, such as Oracle
database."
Ascential's main competitors are Informatica and Tibco, although
SAP's Netweaver and Oracle Application Server offer data
integration capabilities for the suppliers' own applications.
Microsoft with SQL Server 2005 also offers some data
integration.