On 23 July 2009, Oracle announced an agreement to acquire GoldenGate Software, a private company that provides changed-data capture (CDC), replication and high-availability offerings. Oracle expects to close the deal in 2H09.

Oracle continues to increase its focus on data integration tools. Oracle once offered data integration only in the Warehouse Builder extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) tool. The acquisition of Sunopsis in 2006 gave Oracle ETL support for heterogeneous environments. GoldenGate will add real-time or near-real-time data integration CDC and replication functions — an area of significant demand. Two of Oracle's big rivals in this space, IBM and Informatica, made similar acquisitions in 2006 and 2002, respectively.

GoldenGate overlaps with Oracle Streams. Client inquiries and reference calls indicate that many GoldenGate customers selected GoldenGate over Streams for bidirectional active/active architectures. As a result, Oracle has an opportunity to replace Streams with GoldenGate technology. However, the two will reside in different business units — Streams is in Oracle's database management system (DBMS) unit while GoldenGate will become part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware (OFM) group. This arrangement will slow any rationalization of these offerings.

GoldenGate's high-availability and disaster recovery offerings will help Oracle to:

• Give Oracle Application customers a migration path to the Oracle DBMS should they wish to move from competitors DB2 and SQL Server
• Migrate and upgrade DBMSs and applications with little or no application downtime
• Meet extremely high-availability requirements via active/active bidirectional replication

Many GoldenGate customers run its high-availability and disaster recovery software on non-Oracle platforms such as HP NonStop, Teradata, DB2 and SQL Server. Oracle will likely invest to attract them to its own offerings while continuing to support these products. Customers can gauge Oracle’s commitment to non-Oracle DBMSs by the enhancements it provides and the speed with which it supports new releases. Sales will likely be limited until Oracle convinces customers that a heterogeneous approach is core to its "hot-pluggable" middleware strategy.

Oracle Customers:

• Consider Oracle for data integration tools due to functional breadth, but assess the depth of integration across the portfolio.
• If you need active/active bidirectional replication, wait to make plans until the deal closes and Oracle issues a product road map for Streams/GoldenGate.

GoldenGate Customers:

• If you are not an Oracle customer or use GoldenGate for active/active bidirectional replication, wait three to six months after the deal closes for a road map for enhancements. If Oracle does not show commitment to your platform or architecture, seek an alternative to GoldenGate functions.

• "IBM Strengthens Data Integration Suite With DataMirror Buy” — DataMirror's Transformation Server will fill some of IBM's gaps in connectivity for Information Server, its flagship data integration suite, and create a strong base for a comprehensive change data capture and replication platform. By Ted Friedman, Donna Scott and Donald Feinberg
• "Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools” — Vendor consolidation continues, driven by the convergence of single-purpose tools into data integration suites or platforms. By Ted Friedman, Mark Beyer and Andreas Bitterer

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