IBM's march into the information management space took another step forward yesterday as the company announced it had agreed to pay $161 million for Canadian data integration software specialist DataMirror.

The company said the deal, which is subject to shareholder and regulatory approval and is expected to close in the autumn, would bolster IBM's ability to provide customers with real-time insight into changes to their data, allowing firms to respond quicker to changing market conditions such as shortages in their supply chains or changes in customer circumstances.

DataMirror's technology identifies and captures data that has been changed in some way and delivers the changed data in real time to databases and applications, such as data integration platforms or business intelligence (BI) reporting tools, and ensures that the information held in these systems remains accurate and up-to-date.

"Organisations need the ability to capture and use information in real-time to help them make better business decisions, better serve their customers and increase operational efficiencies,” said Ambuj Goyal, general manager of IBM's information management arm.

IBM said that it plans to integrate DataMirror's technology into its IBM Information Server information platform, in a move designed to make "it easier for clients to apply real-time data integration techniques from a single platform across their businesses".

Alys Woodward of analyst firm IDC said that DataMirror's status as a major IBM partner should ensure that the integration faces few difficulties. "IBM is bringing capabilities in-house that it was already providing externally through a partnership with DataMirror," she said. "What this suggests is that they see a good opportunity for growth with this technology and a need to scale up DataMirror."

The deal is the twenty-first acquisition in IBM's information on-demand strategy, to which the company last year pledged $1bn investment over three years.

Woodward said the strategy was making good progress with IBM "quietly going off behind the scenes and building up a very strong [data management] platform" . She added that demand for the types of data integration, cleansing and management tools that IBM is amassing is expected to soar over the next few years as firms seek to maximise returns from their investment in BI reporting suites.

" BI tools are mature now but they are under pressure to be able to do more and they cannot deliver what customers want unless the underlying data issues are sorted," Woodward explained. "If you can’t get the data at the right time, BI fails – and that is what IBM is trying to address."