IBM buys DataMirror

The System i high availability software market has heated up considerably in the last six months, with a flurry of consolidations. Now IBM has joined the fray, buying Markham, Ontario-based DataMirror for $161 million.

It all started back in November, when Vision Solutions bought iTera. Then last month, Vision bought Lakeview Technology, Inc. Now IBM is buying DataMirror. In short, the four largest System i high availability software vendors have been reduced to two, with one of them now being your hardware provider as well.

The acquisition is expected to be complete by the end of September. DataMirror has 220 employees and 2,200 customers, many of them in the System i HA space. It will be interesting to see how IBM positions itself in this market with the acquisition. It announced that it will integrate DataMirror software into its own Information Management Software, and there wasn’t one mention in the press release about the System i platform.

Still, the Vision-iTera-Lakeview combination is one to reckon with in the System i world, but IBM is one company that could do some reckoning, meaning competition in the HA space may still be alive and kicking.