Informix has outlined the future for Ardent Software in South Africa, following on the acquisition of Ardent by Informix last December. With board and regulatory approval having been granted in the US, the companies are now in a position to integrate aspects of their business where it makes sense to do so, says Dereck Daymond, MD for Informix, South Africa, Gulf and Egypt.
"Ardent has two main business streams, which complement those of Informix," says Daymond. "The database and tools side of Ardent, centred on the Universe database, extends our offerings in the Transact business stream of Informix, while the DataStage Suite adds great depth to our Business Intelligence division."
The success of Universe in South Africa, where it is one of the leading embedded databases, means Informix will leave this business stream to run unchanged, says Daymond. However, the situation with DataStage is more complex.
"DataStage is at once an integral component of our business intelligence portfolio, and an important product for other business intelligence vendors," notes Daymond. "This means we will promote and sell it ourselves, but ring-fence its management, so as to reassure the market that it remains an independent product suite."
Local customers will benefit from increased support, adds Daymond, as they will be able to tap directly into Informix`s UK-based helpdesk.
With more than 20 customer sites locally and 1 500 customers sites globally, DataStage is the market`s leading product set for automating the process of extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) of multiple and disparate data sources for manipulation and analysis in business intelligence solutions. As such, it neatly complements Informix`s business intelligence suite, which includes Informix Red Brick and Informix XPS.
"The addition of DataStage gives Informix an end-to-end business intelligence suite," says Daymond. "We have long been a DataStage reseller, so in one sense this is merely an extension of our backing of DataStage as the market`s leading ETL product set."
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