Iona acquires data management firm

07-03-2007

by Ciara O'Brien

Irish software firm Iona has bought data management company C24 in a cash deal.

Iona executives are keeping quiet about the value of the deal, saying only that it was an all-cash deal and that it builds on an existing reseller agreement between the two firms.

Iona expects the new acquisition to be completed within a year. According to Iona executives, the deal is primarily a technology and expertise acquisition.

C24 specialises in data management and transformation technology. Iona is incorporating C24's technologies into its flagship Artix range of distributed service-oriented architecture (SOA) infrastructure solutions, in a bid to allow it to roll out large-scale deployments of the technology.

"The core philosophy of standards-based, distributed computing has been embraced by C24, and consequently the company's technology is very much in line with that of Iona and Artix. This acquisition is a natural extension of how we enable our customers to generate greater ROI from their existing and future IT assets and reduce their fixed cost of IT ownership," said Peter Zotto, Iona's chief executive.

UK-based C24's services include pre-built message libraries of data services standards, such as Swift, FpML, ISO 20022/Unifi, Sepa and Fix.

"C24 represents an important piece of the puzzle for our customers who are adopting SOA as their computing architecture of choice and are looking for ways to effectively deal with the legacy data, which can be an important part of the success of any SOA deployment," said Larry Alston, Iona's marketing vice president, in a conference call.

The acquisition marks Iona's first purchase in some time. Unlike other software firms, it has been keeping a tight grip on its purse strings. And that's not without good reason -- the software company only returned to profitability in 2006 after a string of bad results.

Iona was hit by a slowdown in enterprise software spending which began in 2001, and the turnaround has been mainly attributed to the success of the Artix range.

Iona is a former spin-off from Trinity College, Dublin, and was established in 1991. It employs 347 people worldwide, with approximately 115 staff employed at the firm's headquarters in Ireland. C24, meanwhile, currently employs 12 people in London.