Syncsort Acquires Mainframe Database Expertise

As part of an effort to increase the amount of mainframe database expertise it can put at the disposal of IT organizations, Syncsort today announced it has acquired Cogito.

Syncsort CEO Josh Rogers says that the provider of extract, transform and load (ETL) tools is seeing a spike in demand for mainframe data integration expertise thanks mainly to the rise of Big Data applications.

Cogito specializes in DB2 databases from IBM and IDMS databases from CA Technologies running on zOS. Syncsort is as much interested in the expertise in these databases as it is the core Cogito business because demand for integration services surrounding mainframe data is as high as it’s ever been, says Rogers.

Much of the demand, notes Rogers, is being driven by ETL projects involving the movement of mainframe data into Hadoop or other Big Data platforms such as Splunk. Once on that platform, IT organizations are analyzing that data alongside a trove of more unstructured data to gain additional insights into customer behavior, says Rogers.

“In a large enterprise, most of the core transaction and customer data still resides in the mainframe,” says Rogers.

The biggest issue many of the organizations have, adds Rogers, is that when it comes to both mainframes and Big Data there’s a shortage of skilled talent at both ends of the process. The acquisition of Cogito, says Rogers, is intended to go a long way toward helping customers close that gap.