Data integration maven Informatica announced the acquisition of Applimation, which describes itself as an information lifecycle management (ILM) firm.
Applimation says it delivers a product portfolio for customers to, “manage various phases of their application data lifecycle, from testing to archiving. Application ILM reduces total-cost-of-ownership and increases return-on-investment associated with enterprise business applications, such as ERP, CRM, HR and SCM.”
Applimation says analysts believe 80% of data in these enterprise applications is ‘inactive’, yet such data consumes expensive storage and database capacity. In addition, more than 40% of data is estimated to be confidential. Effective lifecycle management of application data lowers storage and database costs, improves performance and ensures confidentiality, according to the firm.
Applimation, founded in 1998 and claiming to have “hundreds” of customers worldwide, calls its enterprise data management suite Informia. Informatica was founded in 1993. It was not amongst Applimation’s list of partners.
The Informia suite includes Informia Archive; Informia Data Subset which is said to enable organizations to create smaller, targeted databases for projects teams; Informia Data on Demand which offers a way of moving user-selected production data into existing non-production environments, such as development, QA and training; and Informia Secure, an automated data privacy offering.
Informatica said it estimates that organisations spend more than $400m annually on application ILM solutions.
“In this economy, customers understand, now more than ever, the value of taking a holistic approach to application ILM,” said Bob Markese, Applimation CEO. “By integrating Applimation with the Informatica platform, customers now have a single product portfolio to manage the various phases of their application data lifecycle from data migration, test data management, archiving and application retirement.”
“Our acquisition of Applimation expands our addressable market to encompass an adjacent growth category – application Information Lifecycle Management,” said Sohaib Abbasi, Informatica chairman and CEO. “The combination of Informatica and Applimation further advances our technology leadership in data integration. Together, we will offer customers a platform to access, integrate and trust all their active and archived data, while reducing total-cost-of-ownership.”
Informatica is paying $40m in cash – the acquisition is expected to close in a matter of days.
Informatica’s fourth quarter figures announced in January saw sales up 9% to $124.4m, with net income holding steady at $19.9m versus $20.6m in the year-ago quarter. Income from operations came in at $39.5m compared to $20m in the fourth quarter of 2007.