IBM announced Tuesday that it will acquire Venetica
to manage access to its DB2 Information
Integrator for Content software.
Venetica is a content management software
company specializing in unstructured data, which is the hard-to-pigeon-hole information contained in HTML
technology in place to manage such data through its DB2 line, but it doesn’t have the capability of grabbing
information from other vendors.
Venetica, however, does have that capability. It
provides access to unstructured data sources at competitors like
Documentum, FileNet, Hummingbird, Open Text, Interwoven and Stellent through
its VeniceBridge Wrapper integration product.
“Venetica added a lot, as far as the unstructured data sources, from the
many different vendors,” said Jon Prial, IBM DB2 information management vice
president of marketing. “It really helps pull together a common,
virtualized view of information for our customers.”
The inclusion of Venetica’s software into Information Integrator will also
be used to sell other DB2 products: Content Manager, WebSphere
Application Server, Business Integration and Portal, as well as IBM’s
Workplace. According to IBM officials, the company already has 625,000
companies worldwide using its information management software.
Prial wouldn’t give a timeframe when the Venetica product will be
available with Big Blue’s brand, but he said the process of
integrating the software would not be difficult.
“It’s really just a matter of, initially, taking the product and branding it
and putting on the IBM logo, so you wouldn’t expect that to take an awful
lot of time,” Prial said.
Earlier this year, Venetica
penned a similar agreement with IBM to make data
repositories from other companies work in VeniceBridge.
All 70 Venetica employees will remain onboard as future IBM employees.
Officials from both companies would not divulge the price tag of the acquisition, which
is expected to close in the fourth quarter.
