IBM Buys Identity Company to Nail Down Whos Who - ' Fitting In ' (
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The SRD acquisition is just the latest in a series of moves that IBMs Information Management division is taking to strengthen its position as a document-handling giant. For example, as IBM Information Management General Manager
Janet Perna told eWEEK.com recently, the company is quietly plugging away at what its calling the first-ever hybrid native XML and relational database, which is as yet unnamed.
On top of that, IBM is planning to release in the second quarter a version of Data Warehouse Edition that finally integrates its hitherto disparate collection of BI parts, including the DB2 database, DB2 CubeViews, Information Integrator, Intelligent Miner, Warehouse Manager and OfficeConnect.
Keith Gile, an analyst at Forrester Researchs Westport, Conn., branch, said the SRD acquisition addresses a "huge area of BI that really hasnt been addressed by too many folks"—namely, the area of operational data when youre talking about time-crunch mode.
Operational data analytics pertain to situations where workers have to make smart, data-dependent decisions in real time. For example, an airline worker checking in travelers has to make safety-related decisions based on what she thinks of a given traveler—a decision that should ideally be based in part on criminal records.
"Car dealerships, tellers in the bank, an insurance agency—there might be something about a human that hasnt been included [in one set of applications, for example], and thats where this type of technology, with large sets of data from really strange sources, can tell you theres an anomaly, so pay attention," Gile said. "There are so many times a decision has to be made based on what I think of you."
Now, IBM is adding an engine to help scrub lots of inconsistent data, not just by cleaning it but by setting some profiling and establishing some benchmark by which a human being can be judged against some set of criteria, Gile said.
That has huge ramifications in the realm of privacy, of course, as individuals get identified in various databases and then potentially experience discrimination based on analytical interpretation. Wozniak said SRD has a product in beta testing, called Anonymous Resolution, that addresses such concerns.
Anonymous Resolution is designed to allow organizations to compare identity data without making that data visible to other organizations. Such a tool will allow organizations to check identities to protect themselves but still protect the privacy of customers or clients, he said.
SRD, based in Las Vegas, has some 50 employees, most of whom will be absorbed into IBM, Wozniak said. Details of when SRDs products will be incorporated into Information Integrator were not immediately available.
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