IBM closes Informix billion dollar deal

By Adrian Kerr, ZDNet Australia
02 July 2001 04:45 PM
Tags: ibm, informix
IBM today announced the completion of its US$1 billion acquisition of the database assets of Informix, promising to absorb, rather than retrench staff, in the wake of the takeover.

The acquisiton, announced ten weeks ago, doubles the size of IBM's distributed database business.

Big Blue says nearly all of Informix's 2500 database employees worldwide (close to 400 in Asia-Pacific) will be offered employment with IBM.

An IBM spokesman told ZDNet that, of the 400 positions, 70 would will be based in Australia & New Zealand and ruled out any mass redundancies due an IT skills shortage.

"We will add close to 400 talented developers, services, technical and sales people from Informix to our team throughout the Asia Pacific region," Peter Graham, regional manager for DB2 at IBM Australia/NZ said in a statement.

While all technical staff will be retained, duplicated positions in the areas of management and administration are unlikley to survive.

The company says it intends to incorporate select Informix technologies into future versions of DB2 Universal Database, which will remain IBM's flagship database product.

"Now that the acquisition is complete, IBM plans to immediately market and sell Informix's database products worldwide through a fully integrated IBM and Informix sales force and maintain existing relationships with Informix customers and business partners, including support for and updating of current Informix products," Graham said.

IBM says for the first quarter 2001, it posted a 36 percent increase in its DB2 Data Management business on distributed platforms, "three times faster than the industry growth rate and six times faster than Oracle's database business".

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