Sybase bought two ways to help it handle data for
customers with its purchase of information integration and management software makers.
The Avaki
purchase will help companies that traffic a lot of data integrate their software assets into one cohesive system. Sybase will incorporate the technology into its
information management software suite.
Sybase also purchased ISDD Ltd., a privately held provider of unstructured
data management. ISDD helps companies query and analyze structured and
unstructured data from fixed and mobile sources.
Terms of both deals were not disclosed.
Sybase Director Haridas Nair said Avaki’s integration software lets
customers cull data from multiple sources, allowing developers to build
applications in a service-oriented architecture (SOA)
data can be accessed through one console as if it were a single source via
SQL
In one scenario where Avaki’s technology might be used, Nair said, a
developer writing an application has to worry about what data he needs,
where to get it from and how to retrieve it. The data could come from three
or four different systems.
Avaki’s software helps developers solve the “where” and the “how” dilemmas
of data retrieval. With two-thirds of the problem solved, the developer can
focus on the “what” part, Nair said. As more projects need to access data,
they go through the common Avaki mechanism instead of creating the “where”
and the “how” for each project.
The executive said ISDD technology queries unstructured content, such as
e-mails, PowerPoint and PDF documents, as well as structured data from
databases and Web sites. ISDD software looks at documents, populates them into
categories and isolates specific paragraphs of information in a document.
Nair said the purchases will help fill out the company’s Unwired Enterprise
strategy for managing information from the data center to the end user. The
idea is to provide data services that let clients manage, move and access
data.
Sybase launched its data services push last year, announcing auditing and
archiving software, as well as so-called real-time data services that bring
information to users on the fly.
Analysts say technologies that allow an enterprise to access and manage
volumes of unstructured data from a variety of sources are becoming popular
among customers struggling with the glut of data.
Sybase isn’t the only company searching for better integration products,
which can prove lucrative.
While it remains focused on its Unwired Enterprise play to pipe data to any
user anywhere in real-time, rival IBM recently locked up and integrated its purchase of Ascential Software. Ascential gives Big Blue considerable
extraction, transformation and loading
