Informatica Corporation (NASDAQ: INFA), a leading provider of data integration software, today announced its intent to acquire Itemfield, an innovative vendor delivering data transformation technology that enables near-universal access to unstructured and semi-structured data. Over the last year, as an OEM partner, Informatica embedded core Itemfield technology as an option to the flagship data integration platform, PowerCenter. Joint customers have successfully utilized the unified platform to access and integrate unstructured and semi-structured data in both batch and real-time applications.
Informatica will acquire all of the capital stock of privately held Itemfield in a cash transaction valued at approximately $55 million. The acquisition will be accounted for under the purchase method of accounting. The acquisition has been approved by the board of directors of each company and is subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.
“The combination of Informatica and Itemfield will offer the most comprehensive data integration platform with near-universal access to integrate unstructured, semi-structured and structured data,” said Sohaib Abbasi, chairman and CEO of Informatica. “With this strategic acquisition, Informatica will offer additional unique capabilities for cross-enterprise data exchange. Together, we will deliver a well-differentiated product to further strengthen Informatica’s leadership in the enterprise data integration market.”
Unstructured data includes content authored using personal productivity products such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat. Over 80% of data within enterprises is estimated to be in a broad array of such unstructured formats, including Microsoft Word and Excel as well as Adobe PDF file formats. Semi-structured data includes a variety of industry-specific XML-based data exchange standards such as SWIFT for international funds transfer by financial institutions and HL7 for patient clinical data records by healthcare institutions. These semi-structured data exchange formats facilitate communication and collaboration between enterprises. By inferring and learning from the format of unstructured and semi-structured content, the unique Itemfield technology enables integration of these data sources with all the traditional structured data sources. This innovative technology has earned several accolades, including being named by Gartner as one of the “Cool Data Integration Vendors” in 2006.
Over 150 customers use Itemfield to access and integrate unstructured and semi-structured data. These customers include American Airlines; leading financial institution Natexis Bank; and healthcare IT services company, McKesson. The combination of Informatica and Itemfield will enable customers to cost-effectively integrate all their data and exchange data with their business partners.
NEAR-UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO UNSTRUCTURED DATA
Itemfield enables near-universal access to unstructured and semi-structured data without requiring any custom programming. Itemfield includes built-in support for unstructured data authored using Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat, Postscript, PCL, SUN StarOffice, AFP and HTML. With the combination of PowerCenter and Itemfield technology, Informatica will enable customers to automate the entire data integration lifecycle to access, discover, cleanse, integrate all their data – unstructured, semi-structured and structured.
B2B OR CROSS-ENTERPRISE DATA EXCHANGE
Today’s inter-connected business environment requires enterprises to exchange data with customers, suppliers and partners. To facilitate data exchange, industry-specific standards bodies have established data formats such as SWIFT, NACHA, ACORD, RosettaNet, HIPAA and HL7. Effective data exchange between enterprises requires flexible support for multiple versions and variants of these data formats. Based on a unique meta-parser technology, Itemfield delivers an adaptable environment to best address these requirements.
INTEGRATION, TIMELINE AND PRODUCT AVAILABILITY
“We are excited to combine our two companies to jointly offer our customers a comprehensive data integration platform—integrating Itemfield’s innovative unstructured and semi-structured access technology with Informatica’s market-leading platform” said Sam Somech, CEO of Itemfield. “Access to unstructured data is a key requirement for our customers to gain a holistic view of information required by their key business imperatives. Together with Informatica, we will extend Informatica’s data integration leadership.”
Itemfield’s transformation technology for unstructured and semi-structured data is currently integrated with PowerCenter. Informatica will continue to offer this technology to enable integration of unstructured and semi-structured with structured data. Informatica will be discussing the acquisition of Itemfield on a conference call beginning today at 5:00 p.m. EDT. A live Webcast of the conference call will be available at http://www.informatica.com/investor; the replay details will also be available from this link. To join via telephone dial 1-617-614-4072 (1-800-688-0836, in the U.S.) reservation number 93440712.
This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding the expected financial impact of our acquisition of Itemfield on our non-GAAP financial results for 2006 and our ability to integrate the technology we acquired from Itemfield into our data integration product suite according to the timeline described above. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from the results described in this press release. The potential risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ include, among others, risks related to our ability to (1) successfully integrate Itemfield and its employees into Informatica and achieve expected synergies, (2) accurately forecast the acquisition related restructuring costs and allocation of the purchase price to in process research and development, goodwill and other intangibles, as well as the impact of equity based compensation expense associated with FAS 123R, (3) compete successfully in this highly competitive and rapidly changing marketplace, and (4) retain key employees, as well as those risks and uncertainties included under the caption “Risk Factors” in Informatica’s report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2006, which is on file with the SEC and is available on the company’s investor relations website at www.informatica.com. All information provided in this release is as of November 27, 2006, and Informatica undertakes no duty to update this information.