Rocket Software has purchased the UniData product line from IBM. P2 Energy Solutions is excited about the change in ownership and the long term benefit it will provide to Excalibur clients through expanded functionality in the UniData database.
According to Andy Youniss, President and CEO of Rocket Software, "We are excited to explore bringing you new features, functions, and products from our vast intellectual property portfolio. We do not have any formal announcements to make at this time, but it is easy to get excited about Rocket business intelligence, performance management, database tools, legacy modernization, and terminal emulation technologies (to name a few) and U2."
UniData and Rocket: A Strategic Fit
Bob Dedecker, P2 Energy Solutions Sr. Director of Application Systems for Excalibur, attended a summit regarding the purchase, and is excited that Rocket Software will be announcing enhancement delivery timelines as early as November. One item they are trying to target for announcement is increased availability and support for integration with MS SQL Server. UniData is a very nice strategic fit for Rocket Software and Rocket specifically targeted UniData for acquisition to fill a need in their portfolio, which did not contain a database engine. Rocket offers many solutions, such as BI tools and User Interface technologies, that rely on database systems. There are many synergies between Rocket and UniData. In past acquisitions, Rocket Software has invested considerably in the acquired products and delivered significantly increased product features and functionality.
"We've built a world-class platform"
"Rocket has made over 25 acquisitions over the course of our life. Rocket has never "killed" anything we've acquired. We acquire businesses that we can help grow, which in turn helps Rocket grow. Like anything else in life, some of our acquisitions have been more successful than others. We are no different than you and your business in this regard; not everything we do is wildly successful. But we think we've built a world-class platform that can identify, acquire, and integrate businesses and provide them with an environment that gives them a great chance to succeed. I don't think you can ask for more than that," stated Youniss.
Purchase Means Investment for Growth
The entire U2 Team within IBM, over 100 people, will be moving to Rocket Software and Rocket Software intends to let this unit operate independently. This will ensure very little disruption in processing, contacts, etc. Susie Siegesmund, formerly IBM's Director of U2 Data Servers and Tools and the highest-ranking IBMer to move to Rocket Software, says the sale will allow the new owner to invest for growth. In the short term, the products will continue on their current release schedules.
"We expect very minor changes to currently published schedules, mostly due to the transition of all our development systems to a new network," Siegesmund comments. "In the future, customers can expect more investment in development, resulting in more frequent releases."
If you have any questions about Excalibur and Rocket Software's purchase of UniData, please send us an email at info(at)p2es.com, or call our sales department at 800-662-9144.
About Rocket Software
Rocket Software was founded in 1990 with an initial focus on developing and delivering software solutions to IBM mainframe customers. Since that time, Rocket has greatly expanded its software OEM business to cover a wide spectrum of enterprise infrastructure products in the areas of Business Intelligence, Storage, Networks, Terminal Emulation, Integration, Security, and Database. Rocket has licensed its products to a number of major OEMs and is engaged in business and technology partnerships with IBM, EMC/RSA, HP/EDS, Nortel, Motorola, and many others.
In parallel with a significant R&D investment in developing software products, Rocket Software began a series of strategic acquisitions in 2000. As a result, Rocket now has well over 100 software products that are licensed both through OEM partners and VARs/resellers, and via direct sales through Rocket's acquired branded sales channels, such as Areotext, ARKIVIO, BlueZone, CorVu, LegaSuite, Mainstar, Seagull, Servergraph, SmartDB, and U2.
We endeavor to keep the teams intact and entrust them to manage and expand the product lines that they initially created. This philosophy has allowed Rocket to grow to more than 700 employees around the world, including Eastern and Western Europe, Australia, Asia and North America.
About UniData
UniData is a nested relational database system that is designed for high performance, low cost of ownership, high uptime and reliability. A nested relational database shares a similar underlying structure as XML, which is one of the latest trends in data management, and is a way to manage large amounts of transactional data such as in financial management systems. In these cases, nested relational databases offer exceptional performance. The U2 products are installed at over 62,000 sites with over 3 million end users. Clients include Suncor Energy, John Deere, Bloomberg, American Express, Hyatt, Dell, Petco.com and thousands of others. According to a white paper from IDC, the U2 products had a 9.4% share of the $1.2 billion embedded database market in 2004. Additionally, 40 percent of higher-education institutions and 55 out of the top-100 leasing businesses worldwide run UniData. For more information on UniData, please contact Rocket Software at http://www.rocketsoftware.com/u2.
About P2 Energy Solutions
P2 Energy Solutions focuses on the development and support of data, software and enterprise services to meet the information and business process needs of the energy industry. P2 Energy Solutions is the oil and gas industry's most comprehensive source of asset management solutions including Entelligent, Enterprise Upstream, Reserves Management, Excalibur, Qbyte, Tobin Enterprise Land, Tobin GIS Studio, Tobin SuperBase and Wellcore. With solutions deployed at more than 500 companies worldwide, P2 Energy Solutions enables clients to achieve greater productivity while maintaining effective controls.
The company has an 80-year history of serving the oil and gas industry and understands its workflow processes. P2 Energy Solutions has the breadth and depth of expertise to meet the expanding financial, operational and data management needs of energy companies from private independents to super-majors.