The Four Hundred--Lakeview and DataMirror Make Acquisitions

The wave of consolidation in the software industry continues with new acquisitions by Lakeview Technology and DataMirror. Lakeview's acquisition of Availant, which codeveloped High Availability Cluster Multiprocessing (HACMP) software for IBM's pSeries servers, could turn into real coup when IBM brings its OS/400 and AIX operating systems together on its Power-based servers next year. Meanwhile, DataMirror's acquisition of PointBase gives the company new tools for its RFID initiative.

Availant was founded in 1989 in Waltham, Massachusetts, as CLAM Associates by three IBMers who worked on the pSeries, which was called the RS/6000 back then. In 1990, IBM selected Availant to help develop HACMP, which IBM sells as a licensed product for the AIX operating system and which is widely regarded as a very solid clustering solution, with the capability to share work among 32 nodes.

In 1996, Availant developed another high availability product called High Availability Geographic, or HAGEO, which automated the roll-swap between geographically separated sites when the primary site goes down. This June, Availant assisted IBM with the development of HACMP 5.1, which brought a new feature called Extended Distance, which integrates IBM's Enterprise Storage Subsystem (Shark) disk array and Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy (PPRC) software into the disaster-recovery scheme.

While Lakeview has always been focused on OS/400 high availability software, the Chicago company hopes that all the expertise in AIX high availability software it gains through Availant will pay off with an upcoming co-mingling of AIX, Linux, and OS/400 that IBM says to expect at some point in the coming year on the Power5-based "Squadron" servers. Lakeview says its customers have been asking how they can keep all of their critical applications online without buying a separate high availability system and training personnel for each specific operating environment. That's the Holy Grail in high availability software right now, and Lakeview's competitors know it, too.

This was the second acquisition for Lakeview in November. Earlier in the month, Lakeview acquired most of the assets of H.A. Technical Solutions, a Golden Valley, Minnesota, developer of high availability software for Unix, Linux, and Windows operating systems. Now it appears that Lakeview has relegated one of H.A. Technical Solutions' products, called H.A. Clusters, to supporting Linux, while it relies on Availant to bring the AIX and HACMP expertise to the house. MIMIX, meanwhile, will continue to support OS/400 and Windows, provided the Windows are running on one of IBM's integrated xSeries cards. Lakeview is also working on developing a management-layer GUI that can bring all this technology together in a simple way.

Bill Merchantz, Lakeview's president and chief executive, says the acquisition of Availant represents a "merger of talent and products" that completes the company's roadmap for high-availability, clustering, and disaster-recovery products. "I've known Availant's products and services for nearly 10 years, and I have forever been impressed with the quality of management and staff George [Linscott, Availant's CEO] has attracted and the positive reputation they have with customers," Merchantz says.

Since HACMP is an IBM product, Lakeview will not be selling AIX clustering software directly. However, since Availant is one of, if not the top, authority on HACMP outside of IBM, Lakeview should be gaining a healthy stream of revenue from Availant's HACMP services business. Availant and Lakeview are both private companies, and terms of the acquisition were not announced. Availant's revenues came from OEM services, licensed software, and user services.

Because much of IBM's strategy for morphing its Power-based servers into a single eServer platform is still unknown by all but its closest business partners, it's not exactly clear how Lakeview's acquisition of Availant will play out in the long run. However, Lakeview has enjoyed a very close working relationship with IBM over the years--much to the chagrin of some younger companies trying to break into the OS/400 high availability racket--and with that in mind, one would be hard pressed not to put Lakeview on the high availability leader board for the coming eServer consolidation in lieu of its acquisition of Availant.

PointBase, founded by Oracle cofounder Bruce Scott in 1998, develops tools for developing database-driven applications in Java. The company's flagship application is a Java-based relational database server called PointBase Embedded, which runs on many platforms and scales to several terabytes. It also offers a smaller version of the database, called PointBase Micro, designed for handheld computers, and a JDBC-compliant data synchronization component, called PointBase Unisych, which is delivered as a Java API.

DataMirror says PointBase's offerings will find use among the users of its current products, which is a diverse and somewhat complex array of high-availability, database-replication, data-transformation, enterprise application integration (EAI), and auditing software for a variety of platforms, databases, and specific ERP packages. Specifically, DataMirror says it plans to use the PointBase software to expand its wireless data capture software for barcode and RFID (radio frequency identification) applications and to develop new data synchronization solutions for the handheld marketplace.

RFID has piqued the interest of many independent software vendors, and DataMirror appears to be among the latest to catch the bug. With mandates from Wal-Mart and the Department of Defense for its suppliers to start using "smart chips" that can be read (and written) from a distance, RFID is expected to drive a surge in technology research and spending as companies look to squeeze more efficiency into the distribution supply chain. DataMirror says it already offers support for RFID in one of its LiveBusiness solutions, and the PointBase software should help it develop an end-to-end solution that runs from the scanner to the server.

The boards of both PointBase, which is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and DataMirror have already given the go-ahead for the $3.5 million acquisition (a price that could go up if certain performance thresholds are met), and the acquisition is expected to close by the end of the month.

A day before announcing the PointBase acquisition in late November, the publicly traded, Toronto, Ontario, company announced its financial results for the quarter that ended October 31. Revenue increased by about 2 percent, to $16.1 million (in Canadian dollars). Nigel Stokes, DataMirror's chief executive, says license revenue "grew dramatically" during the quarter, largely due to increased demand for the company's mainframe data integration and live audit solutions.

Stokes also said the company grew its investment in IDION Technology Holdings (the parent company of its rival Vision Solutions) by 4 percent during the quarter, and now owns about 43 percent of IDION. DataMirror has also dedicated a page on its Web site to clarify its desire to pursue the IDION purchase peacefully.