Wednesday, January 31, 2007

IBM to acquire Softek

IBM seems to be on a roll in acquiring companies. Next on the list is Softek. The Softek site is very outspoken : "IBM + SOFTEK = The Ultimate Choice in Data Mobility". The press release at the IBM Press Room gives us the full detailed information. The main product of Softek is TDMF : "Softek's patented Transparent Data Migration Facility (TDMF) solution enables a simple, unified approach to the non-disruptive movement and management of data across storage vendor platforms and operating system environments, as part of an information technology (IT) infrastructure change. By using Softek's solutions, clients can improve their ability to migrate data while keeping data online and applications available for end users." Typical use : customer acquires new DASD bu cannot afford to have an outage. TDMF does a transparent move of all your data without the outage. I guess this acquisition also fits into an IBM strategy of offering more and more services instead of just products.
Another question that pops up concerning this acquisition : what will be the reaction of EMC who is also a long-term partner of Softek. EMC also uses LDMF which is an equivalent of TDMF. But where TDMF works on a volume level for a mainframe migration, LDMF operates at a dataset level.
Perhaps this is not such a spectacular acquisition, but still a very interesting one indeed.

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