Rocket Buys Data Integration Provider B.O.S.
September 18, 2023 Alex Woodie
Rocket Software has announced the acquisition of B.O.S., a German provider of data integration software. While the software company targets primarily the mainframe with its data integration solutions, Rocket says it’s considering broadening support to IBM i.
B.O.S. was founded more than 30 years ago to develop data integration solutions that connect the IBM mainframe to other systems. It boasts more than 1,200 installations in 25 countries, including Fortune 50 firms as well as government organizations.
The company’s flagship product, called tcVision, helps customers move data from their mainframe sources, such as Db2, IMS, VSAM files, ADABAS, and CA DATACOM, to databases and other repositories living on other platforms, including Linux, Unix, Windows, including Hadoop and cloud-based repositories like Snowflake and others.
tcVision supports change data capture (CDC) functionality to minimize the impact on the source system and provide fast data replication to target systems. It also provides zSTREAM, which can load data into databases or stream Apache Kafka message busses.
B.O.S. customers use the tcVision software for a variety of use cases, including real-time data extraction and loading into data lakes and warehouses for analytics use cases, as well as bulk data extraction and loading into target databases or file systems as part of a migration. The software supports bi-directional data integration capabilities for keeping two or more systems in synch.
B.O.S. also develops tcAccess, a data virtualization solution designed to expose mainframe data to Linux, Unix, and Windows-based applications. With the tcAccess driver, mainframe data can be accessed from the target systems via standard ODBC and JDBC connectors, according to B.O.S.
Rocket Software, which has long had an interest in providing mainframe solutions to customers, had its eye on tcVision. The Waltham, Massachusetts company announced that it renamed tcVision as Rocket Data Replicate and Sync. As it did before, the software will allow mainframe customers to move their mainframe data to platforms running on X86 platforms, as well as analytics environments running in private and public cloud.
“By bringing B.O.S. into the Rocket Software family, our customers will have the unique capability to seamlessly replicate data between the cloud and mainframe, allowing them to modernize in place to accelerate and optimize their journeys and meet the evolving needs of the market,” said Rocket president and chief executive officer Milan Shetti in a statement announcing the deal.
Steven Dickens, the vice president and practice lead at Futurum Group, says the deal shows Rocket’s forward thinking approach to solving modern IT challenges.
“This deal further signals that while Rocket may be rooted in mainframe it is fully embracing the future of IT infrastructure – hybrid cloud,” Dickens said in a press release. “In a hybrid environment, agility, scalability, and security aren’t just buzzwords – they’re requisites for organizational success.”
The company could adapt the B.O.S. solutions to target the mainframe’s little brother, the IBM i platform. “The product only supports IBM System z right now but are exploring IBM i in the future,” a Rocket spokesperson told IT Jungle.
Terms of the acquisition of B.O.S. were not shared. The company is not related to BOS – Better Online Solutions, which once provided connectivity solutions to the IBM i’s predecessors.
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