Data integration software firm Informatica Corporation has announced it will acquire new identity resolution technology. Informatica will purchase Nokia subsidiary Identity Systems at a cost of approximately $85 million in cash.

Customers will have access to new capabilities in search and resolution, as well as cross-language identity matching functions, the firm said.

Ovum analyst Madan Sheina noted in a report that since the purchase of quality and profiling tools provider Similarity Systems in 2006, “Informatica is looking to load up on complementary software that will enrich and add interesting new dimensions”.
“Whereas data quality and profiling is about looking at anomalies and consistencies in data, identity resolutions is all about finding connections between data entities by analysing similar attributes to determine if they are the same entity or perhaps are related,” she explained.

Identity Systems supports more than 60 languages. Informatica argued in a report that cross-language capabilities are increasingly needed as IT systems have to accommodate businesses extending their global reach.

Most companies that hand-code IT projects dealing with identity data spend around $450 a year, said the Informatica report. “Identity Systems’ technology improves operational efficiency by automating the entire process dealing with language, nomenclature, structure, format, location, duplication, omissions and even errors,” it added.

Ovum's Sheina expects more acquisitions considering the company’s financial results, potentially in the area of master data management.

Informatica disclosed first quarter revenues of $103.7 million, while its profit for the same period was up more than 20 per cent. It has signed repeat business with 178 customers and added 38 new clients to its list.

Informatica chairman and chief executive, Sohaib Abbasi, said he is pleased with the results considering the economic climate. “With our geographic diversification strategy, we clearly benefited from growing contribution by international regions,” he said.

“The notion of Informatica as a siloed data warehousing-centric (ETL) tools provider is a distant memory," Ovum's Sheina added. “Its suite now extends to operational data integration areas like replication, migration and synchronisation, and of course data quality.”

Further details of the acquisition have not been disclosed but the acquisition is expected to be finalised by the end of May 2008, subject to customary closing conditions.