Syncsort Acquiring UK Circle Computer Group

Syncsort Inc. has completed the acquisition of UK-based Circle Computer Group, kicking off the acquisition-based and organic growth strategy announced earlier this year by its new CEO, Lonne Jaffe.

Circle offers a portfolio of software products that allow organizations to make valuable, previously “locked away” mainframe data securely available for new enterprise-wide big data initiatives without requiring any changes to existing applications, reducing software costs in the process.

“We’re looking to acquire fast-growing companies with extraordinary talent and highly differentiated software that will advance our strategy and easily snap into our existing technology,” said Lonne Jaffe, Syncsort’s CEO. “We were really fortunate to find such a company in Circle.”

Circle’s product, DL/2, provides a software engine that enables the transparent migration of applications accessing large quantities of data from the IBM Information Management System (IMS) to DB2 on z/OS, without requiring any application changes. This mission-critical mainframe data can be made securely available to big data platforms such as Apache Hadoop by using Syncsort’s DMX-h product line. Circle also provides similar capabilities for moving IBM Virtual Storage Access Method (VSAM) data.

In addition to lowering enterprise software costs, the Circle technology also helps address the skills challenges many organizations face due to dwindling IMS and VSAM expertise. Over 90% of the Fortune 1000 enterprises use IMS for their mission-critical data management needs, processing more than 50 billion transactions a day and managing over 14PB of data. CICS VSAM processes tens of billions of online transactions every day at the world’s largest companies.

“Many large enterprises with substantial Hadoop projects have told us that up to 80% of their corporate data originates in the mainframe,” said Geoff Cooke, GM, Circle Computer Group. “With mainframe data being such a critical piece of the enterprise’s big data strategy, Syncsort and Circle create a formidable combination of expertise and a trusted ability to bring measurable value to mainframe customers.” S

Syncsort, with thousands of customers worldwide, has industrial-grade software running on more than half the world’s mainframes. The Circle acquisition builds on Syncsort’s competence in the mainframe space with products such as MFX and enhances its  capabilities to integrate mainframe data into Hadoop.

Syncsort’s big data technology partnerships should also benefit from Syncsort’s acquisition of Circle. Cloudera, Inc. and Syncsort recently announced a technology partnership focused on enabling enterprises to leverage mainframe data in Hadoop. Earlier this month, Syncsort announced a new partnership with Tableau Software.

“The early adopters of Hadoop – the consumer Internet companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter – didn’t have mainframes,” continued Jaffe. “Over the next decade, as big data technology adoption accelerates in large enterprises such as banks, governments, retailers and hospitals, powerful software that allows secure access to the vast stores of the world’s mainframe data by these next-generation platforms will become increasingly important.”