08.03.07

Not Your Father’s Data Archive

Posted in Data Management, Database at 10:24 pm by Tony Baer

Breaking up the dog days of summer, IBM announced its intention to acquire Princeton Softech, a firm best known for its database archiving tools. Aside from the obvious market synergy – IBM’s databases and customers are a majority of Princeton’s installed base – Princeton brings an interesting mixed bag of capabilities that fit well with IBM’s emerging data governance initiatives.

In one sense, the issues that Princeton addresses are age old, which is that you don’t want archival data clogging up your most expensive storage arrays. But IBM is not buying just your father’s information lifecycle management (ILM – itself a modernized take on hierarchical storage management) tool. It’s buying a supplier whose tools infuse meaning into data that’s being offloaded and provide a policy engine for determining where and how to store it. And because it can superimpose a business subject view that to us borders on providing a form of semantic data access (that is, you can associate data by logic, as opposed to strict entity relationships), it makes the archives far more accessible.

According to Princeton Softech Chairman and CEO Paul Winn, those capabilities have proven trump cards to sales over the past 12 – 15 months. Whereas the largest chunk of its business used to be ILM-driven (e.g., find the least expensive place to store data based on currency or other factors), compliance-related factors are accounting for much of the growth. Specifically, if you are investigating a financial transaction or documenting compliance with privacy protection laws, having metadata or business objects to guide you through the archive can prove valuable forensic aids.

In the long run there could be synergy with IBM’s Information Server, providing a semantic overlay that covers live and archived data. Looking for data by its meaning rather than its description in the long run may provide a more structured alternative to enterprise search technology. IBM agrees that “it’s on the table,” but we get the feeling that at this point semantic integration is not the first thing on their to-do list.

Princeton also brings assets such as test data management (not that unique) and data archive and migration tools for major enterprise applications (primarily Oracle so far, but eventually SAP and Microsoft). The combination will readily complement IBM Software’s Data Management group’s Master Data Management and Information Server offerings, and IBM Tivoli access control and security solutions. As an IBM acquisition, Princeton Softech may not carry the scope of Ascential, but it’s an equally logical fit.

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