Aims to strengthen hand in "big iron" market in face of continued strong mainframe sales
Redwood City, CA September 12, 2003 Informatica, a provider of data integration and business intelligence software, today announced the execution of a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Striva Corp., a provider of mainframe integration solutions, in a $62 million deal designed to strengthen Informatica's hand in the mainframe market in the face of continued strong sales of these "big iron" computer systems.
Informatica has "OEM'd" Striva's solutions for more than two years and branded as part of its PowerConnect family of products. Informatica said that Striva's technology, which includes mainframe solutions for high-speed bulk data movement and real-time change capture, would extend Informatica's capabilities in enterprise data integration and business intelligence.
Informatica is acquiring all of the capital stock of Striva in a cash and stock transaction valued at approximately $62 million, and the acquisition will be accounted for under the purchase method of accounting. The acquisition has been approved by the board of directors of each company and is subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions.
"Companies have vast amounts of enterprise data on mainframes that they cannot easily access for mission-critical business decisions," said Gaurav Dhillon, president and CEO of Informatica. "With system consolidation and security concerns foremost in the minds of [chief information officers], the role of the mainframe continues to expand."
Dhillon went on to say that the combination of Informatica's data integration platform and business intelligence software with Striva's mainframe integration technology would benefit both companies' customers and future prospects by delivering easy-to-use, scalable mainframe data access when and where a business demands.
"Informatica and Striva's pre-integrated products, along with our joint customer base, partner ecosystem and focus on key verticals, will ensure that Informatica can even more effectively meet the data delivery demands of the largest enterprise customers and government agencies," Dhillon concluded.
According to market reports, 90 percent of Fortune 1000 companies still use mainframes with their mission-critical applications, and over 70 percent of corporate data is stored on mainframes. Informatica believes the acquisition will position it to extend the reach of its enterprise data integration and business intelligence software in order to meet the demand for mainframe integration across transactional, operational and analytical systems.
With large government agencies and enterprises reinvesting in mainframe platforms for strategic initiatives such as homeland security, disaster recovery, fraud detection and security, mainframe usage and data volumes are growing rapidly. META Group estimated that MIPS (millions of instructions per second) shipments would grow by 33 percent annually over the last several years, demonstrating the growing amount of computing that relies on mainframes. In addition, Giga Information Group recently found that mainframe and legacy systems comprise 20 percent of the data integration and data warehousing market.
"Indicators from Gartner research, surveys and client feedback point to continued investment in and resiliency of the mainframe platform," said Ted Friedman, principal analyst for the business intelligence infrastructure team at Gartner. "Many large enterprises and government agencies remain committed to the mainframe and will continue to seek ways to leverage the valuable data assets housed there for purposes of business intelligence. As a result, interest in mainframe connectivity, data quality and data profiling continues to grow."
By providing enterprises with Striva's technology for change data capture (CDC) and real-time and bulk movement, Informatica said it would deliver mainframe data propagation through intelligent, non-intrusive agents that do not require scarce and expensive IT resources. Striva's technology provides enterprises with the benefits of an adaptive, real-time data integration architecture while helping them to leverage legacy IT assets, Informatica asserts.
This proposed acquisition evolved from two years of partnership success. Striva's products are installed worldwide at more than 130 Informatica customers. Informatica will also gain from Striva's focus on key vertical industries, such as government, financial services, healthcare and manufacturing. In addition, the two companies share alliances with joint partners such as Accenture, BearingPoint, EDS, HP, IBM, Sun and others.
