Business Objects and IBM to Extend Mainframe Connectivity for BusinessObjects Data Integrator

Business Objects has announced an OEM agreement whereby Business Objects will embed and resell IBM's mainframe connectivity software with BusinessObjects' Data Integrator platform. The integration of IBM's DB2 Information Integrator Classic Federation for z/OS with BusinessObjects Data Integrator enables organizations to easily access data and metadata on their mainframe systems and deliver quality information to users of reporting and analytic solutions. According to BusinessObjects, as much as 70% of the world's digital information currently resides in mainframe-based data sources. This legacy data is often difficult to combine with other information stored in relational databases. In the past, companies have either had to go through the time consuming and costly process of converting the legacy data or chose to ignore that data altogether. Now, with this combined solution, organizations can access data from both relational and non-relational sources spread across many different types of platforms, operating systems, and databases. This helps to ensure data consistency across massive amounts of data, and speeds up query times across these disparate systems.

IBM provides customers of BusinessObjects Data Integrator with a high performance interface to mainframe data sources that enables both background data extraction as well as a means of capturing changes to data in real time that automatically reformats the data for use by Data Integrator. This combination addresses the broadest set of data movement requirements: bulk data movement, selective extraction, change-only real-time data delivery, and more.

"This agreement enables organizations to more easily leverage DB2 Information Integrator Classic Federation with the Business Objects data integration platform," said Nelson Mattos, Director, Information Integration, IBM Software Group. "The combined solution helps users make better business decisions by enabling them to gain a unified view of information, regardless of differences in data format, data location, or access interfaces."

"The concept of 'information accountability' has become a hot topic in IT departments and executive boardrooms for companies of all sizes, as they are realizing the importance of making decisions based on complete and quality data," said Sachin Chawla, vice president of data integration technology at Business Objects. "Our agreement with IBM is great news for our customers, as it gives them even greater ability to simplify and speed data movement and data sharing across the enterprise. Our tight integration with IBM will help customers to more efficiently use their entire range of information assets to improve decision making."