Informatica did indeed make a purchase this week, but not the one some people were expecting. Instead of buying an MDM platform vendor they purchased Identity Systems for USD 85 million. Identity systems has a strong reputation in the data quality world, and amongst others has plenty of US federal agency clients amongst its 500 customers. It has 55 employees. This will shake things up a bit in the data quality market, where Similarity Systems was already one of the stronger players. The combination of the two under Informatica’s large sales channels will be a potent combination.
It still leaves open the question of whether, and in what way, Informatica will choose to enter the fast growing MDM market. I doubt this will be the last acquisition that they make.

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And today they have another MDM partnership announcement, this time with Orchestra Networks. But does their strategy seem a bit schizophrenic to you? The are still listed as investors in Purisma (unless the D&B acquisition bought them out and the site just hasn’t been updated yet):
http://www.purisma.com/company/investors/
And they put out a press release about a Kalido MDM project that won an award deployed with Informatica ETL on Teradata:
http://www.informatica.com/news/press_releases/2006/06272006a_nationwide.htm
Not to mention all their podcasts, white papers, and seminars talking about how to build a ‘custom’ MDM solution using Informatica, which you have talked about before:
http://andyonenterprisesoftware.com/2006/05/searching-for-an-mdm-strategy/
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