Frequently asked questions
Q: What are you announcing today?
A: IBM is announcing the close of the acquisition of Princeton Softech, a privately held company headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey.
Q: Who is Princeton Softech? What do they do?
A: Princeton Softech is a market leader in data archiving and provides Enterprise Data Governance solutions that align application data management with business objectives. Princeton Softech is a privately owned software company, headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey. More than 2,200 companies worldwide - including nearly half of the Fortune 500 - use Princeton Softech solutions to enhance the business value of their enterprise applications and databases.
Q: What technology does Princeton Softech provide?
A: Princeton Softech provides software solutions for application-aware database archiving, test data management and data masking, critical to an organizations Enterprise Data Governance strategy.
Princeton Softech's Optim Solution allows users to segregate historical data from current data and store it securely and cost-effectively. Through the application of standard and user defined business rules, Princeton Softech's solutions provide fine grained control over which data is archived.
Princeton Softech's test data management solutions allow companies to speed iterative testing tasks, control costs and improve quality through the automated creation of realistic, right-sized test databases, leading to better customer satisfaction and faster revenue generation. Princeton Softech's data privacy solution provides contextual, application-aware, persistent data masking, allowing companies to protect sensitive data so clients can reduce the risk of privacy breaches.
Q: Why did IBM acquire Princeton Softech?
A: Compliance, cost, and competitive advantage. Clients are faced with increasing requirements, complexity, and costs, driving demand for CIOs to improve the effectiveness of their enterprise data governance.
Requirements are driving high volumes of data. These requirements are driven by: high growth data warehouses, compliance mandates, retention requirements for auditing purposes, and business demands for access to real-time and historical data for effective decision making.
Complexity grows with the multitude and variety of custom and packaged applications deployed on a variety of heterogeneous databases and platforms.
Costs continue to escalate due to high storage growth, risk mitigation due to security breaches or compliance failures, and inactive data degrading server performance.
Together, IBM and Princeton Softech will extend IBM Information Management software with application aware data archiving and test data management capabilities.
Q: I have been implementing DB2 Data Archive Expert and DB2 Test Database Generator. What do you anticipate will change?
A: Clients who are in the process of implementing or are planning to implement Data Archive Expert and Test Database Generator should continue with those plans. Investments in these products will be preserved and IBM will continue to support these products in the future. The goal is to bring the best of both product families together; this goal dictates a roadmap strategy that is currently in progress. This roadmap strategy involves reviewing both solutions to determine strengths and gaps within each solution and developing a plan to merge these strengths into a single solution. Customer transparency will be considered as part of this strategy to ensure smooth transition and continuing support for customers of both IBM's and Princeton Softech's solutions. The synergy that both the IBM and Princeton Softech's products bring together will result in a "best of both worlds" solution for both IBM and Princeton Softech's customers.
Q: How does this acquisition affect IBM clients?
A: IBM is broadening their portfolio in the area of Enterprise Data Governance and clients now have even more choices in terms of managing data growth in heterogeneous environments and protecting their sensitive data.
Q: How does this acquisition affect Princeton Softech clients?
A: Optim will now be backed by IBM resources, extending the possibilities for development as well as support and services. IBM plans to continue to enhance the functionality provided by Princeton Softech's products and to make Optim a cornerstone for IBM's enterprise data governance strategy for years to come.