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Microsoft has made yet another "talent and technology" acquisition - this time of Zoomix, a startup based in Israel that makes data quality software for databases.
Microsoft announced today that it has signed an agreement to purchase Zoomix, an Israeli start-up focused on data quality software. With the Zoomix acquisition, Microsoft will provide customers with a manageable and scalable enterprise-class data quality solution which further enhances Microsoft’s vision of making SQL Server a complete data platform for all data management needs.
Zoomix has developed a unique approach to data quality software. The Zoomix system uses guided self-learning technology to easily build a knowledge of how to parse, match, classify and clean data, and applies what it has learned to every new piece of information fed into the system, even if it has not encountered similar data before.
Following the acquisition, Zoomix’s development staff will join the Microsoft research and development center in Israel, and the Zoomix solutions will be added to those of the Microsoft International SQL Server group.
If you aren’t familiar with "data quality," the basic idea is that corporate databases gradually deteriorate as they are used because duplicate and inconsistent data inevitably manages to sneak in. Traditionally, the data has had to be manually scrubbed, but the Zoomix Accelerator software tries to to this "automagically" as illustrated in the usage scenarios on the Zoomix website. The data quality software market is rapidly growing with a number of players (e.g. Business Objects, IBM) and the Zoomix acquisition presumably allows SQL Server to cut a piece of that pie for Microsoft.
Today at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft Server and Tools CVP Bob Kelly, announced that the tardy SQL Server 2008 finally be available in August and added a hint about an upcoming "virtualization launch."
Kelly also said that on September 8, Microsoft plans to launch its "end-to-end virtualization stack" in an event for press and analysts.
"We’re taking virtualization deep into the infrastructure," Kelly said, noting that Microsoft plans to deliver virtualization capabilities to its server, desktop, application and presentation layer technologies. "Less than 10 percent of servers in the market today are acting as hosts for virtualization," he said. And Microsoft plans to have an impact on increasing that percentage. "We’re one-third the price of VMware," Kelly said.
It’s not clear exactly what Kelly is referring to since Microsoft’s top of the line Hyper-V is only $28 dollars with a purchase of Windows Server 2008, but I guess we’ll all find out in September.
Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch has the lowdown on the dirty financial laundry being aired from Fast Search and Transfer which Microsoft acquired in January and whose technology is scheduled to appear in SharePoint Server and SQL Server:
Even back in January when Microsoft agreed to pay $1.2 billion for enterprise search company Fast Search & Transfer, it was mired in an accounting scandal and trading in its stock had been suspended. Its aggressive accounting for phantom deals that never materialized earned it the moniker the “Enron of Norway.” But more sordid details keep coming out from some tenacious reporting by the Norwegian press.
The latest account comes in the June 28 issue of the Norwegian magazine Dagens Næringsliv. In an article (in Norwegian) by Trond Sundnes, Dagens Næringsliv, Gøran Skaalmo, the magazine details how the Norwegian company booked free software trials as revenues, and how its executives set up shell corporations for allegedly self-dealing purposes.
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According to the article, Fast had booked $50 million in fake revenue, $20 million in fictional contracts, and former top executives closely linked to CEO Markus Lervik siphoned off $6 million to shell companies they controlled. Lervik continues to lead the business and is currently the vice president for enterprise search at Microsoft.
Click through for all the details, but it looks like this one is going to need a whole lot of damage control. It also raises questions, perhaps unjustly, about the Fast Search & Transfer technologies themselves.
Bill Gates made a valedictory appearance at this year’s TechEd and along with a Steve Ballmer robot had some some development related announcements:
Not on the formal program was a certain amount of uncertainty over the arrival of SQL Server 2008:
He said Microsoft’s SharePoint Server would become the first Microsoft product to use enterprise search from its Fast Search and Transfer acquisition. The delayed SQL Server will be next. "Think of it as SQL Server, but it’s really Fast," he said.
For all the talk of data services, there was still no date on the next edition of SQL Server. Demonstrating SQL Server 2008, Dave Campbell, from Microsoft’s data storage platform division said SQL Server 2008 would be available in the "next month or two."
SQL Server 2008 is due in 3Q so it is not really past its latest due date. Fast Search & Transfer was acquired by Microsoft in January.
Today Microsoft is cranking up the hoopla for the 2008 refresh of their mainline server and tools products: Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008. Visual Studio 2008 is already generally available and SQL Server 2008 won’t ship until 3Q, but some there is some claim to relevancy for the launch event beyond the marketing hype since Windows Server 2008 became generally available today.
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