Clearlake Sees Vision Deal As M&A Platform In IBM i Land

Vision Solutions, the dominant player in the market for IBM i high availability software, is being sold by Thoma Bravo to Clearlake Capital Group. The transaction, which is expected to be completed by the end of June, will give Clearlake a platform for pursuing more acquisitions in the IBM i ecosystem, a spokesperson with the company told IT Jungle.

Thoma Cressey, as the San Francisco-based private equity firm was then known, obtained Vision Solutions with its acquisition of Idion Technology Holdings way back in September 2006

The IBM i roadmap goes nowhere without DB2 for i. It’s the database that drives the bus. With each release of the IBM i operating system and each of the Technology Refreshes that come between the releases, we find database enhancements prominent. And this isn’t going to change. At least for the foreseeable future, it’s a data-centric world.

It’s not fair to say IBM i innovation is nothing but database. There’s a lot going on in other areas, but the success of the system has always been the integrated database and the future success of the system will absolutely depend

We have been complaining a bit that IBM did not deliver new Power8+ processors and an expected bump in price/performance and lower prices as well to help stimulate the IBM i segment of the Power Systems business. But lo and behold, IBM is finally coming around to the idea that it has to actually do something to entice customers on old releases to move to the latest Power8 iron and to get their licensed program products and operating system on Software Maintenance.

The latest deal, called the IBM i License Transfer Promo, was unveiled at the COMMON conference last week

When you are 25 years old, a quarter century sounds very much like a lifetime, but it’s probably less time than the Kardashians collectively spend admiring themselves in the mirror. Still, in the time it took another generation to come of age and embark on their career paths, the law of cause and effect as it pertains to the job market was turned on its head: working people had become all but irrelevant to the creation of wealth.

Nowhere is that more evident than in IT. While manufacturing has long since resigned from the nuisance of hiring Americans in favor

IBM midrange shops with active development environments are taking an interest in modernization projects. And along with that, comes graphical development tools like Rational Developer for i, commonly referred to as RDi. As more companies find RDi useful, more ISVs realize plug-ins to RDi are in demand. ProData Computer Services just joined the list by offering an RDi plug-in to its popular data access utility called DBU.

DBU RDi offers developers direct access to database files in graphical form and the capability to execute DBU functions from within the RDi Remote Systems Explorer (RSE) panel. In addition to the DB2