Informatica is to buy Nokia-owned identity resolution firm Identity Systems in a cash transaction valued at around $85m.

Informatica will acquire all of the capital stock of Identity Systems, which became a subsidiary of Nokia in February 2006 as part of Nokia's acquisition of Intellisync.

"Identity Systems' business has a much bigger potential as part of Informatica since identity resolution is a key part of many data quality and data integration initiatives," said Tom Furlong, senior vice president of services and software at Nokia.

"We see this as a natural evolution to Identity Systems as they have been operating as a very independent business within Nokia."

Informatica hopes that the acquisition will help the company offer additional capabilities for identity search and resolution, cross-language identity matching and the ability to include identity information into its data integration platform.

"The combination of Identity Systems and Informatica will offer the most advanced data quality products," said Sohaib Abbasi, chairman and chief executive at Informatica.

Barring any problems with the customary conditions, including all required employee consultations, the transaction is expected to close by the end of May 2008.

Informatica posted record first-quarter results, seeing revenues of $103.7m, up 19 per cent from the $87.1m recorded in the first quarter of 2007.