Syncsort

Precisely, rebranded from Syncsort Incorporated in May 2020, is a global software company specializing in Big Data, high speed sorting products, data integration data quality, data enrichment, and location intelligence offerings, for IBM Power Systems, Hadoop, Microsoft Windows, UNIX, Linux, and mainframe systems. According to the company, Precisely products are used by thousands of companies worldwide, with over 12,000 deployments in 70 countries.[2]

Precisely
Private
IndustryData Management
FounderDuane Whitlow and Stan Rintel
Headquarters
Pearl River, New York, USA
Key people
Josh Rogers (CEO)
Number of employees
2,000 (December 2019)[1]
Websiteprecisely.com

History

In 1968, Duane Whitlow and Stan Rintel started a company (Whitlow Computer Systems) to develop software for mainframe computers.[3] The result was a business with a niche product portfolio originally based on high-speed data sorting, but which later moved into Big Data, Hadoop, Cloud, and ETL (extract, transform, load).

According to co-founder Duane Whitlow, the company's original task was to develop an airlines reservations system for Control Data.[3] In the course of that work, the founders encountered timing charts for IBM's existing sort utility, and thought they could build a sort that was much faster.

In the early years, Aso Tavitian managed sales and marketing operations, which soon took off, especially after then-startup Computerworld published a front page story about the product. That story, Whitlow said, resulted in openings in Europe, and the company was one of the first to sell an independent software product in Europe.[3] In those early days, according to Whitlow, Syncsort's product was often the first non-IBM product for many customers.

In the 1990s, then known eponymously as Syncsort, the company expanded into Client/Server environments with a Unix-based sort utility and a backup product. In 2004, Syncsort introduced DMExpress, which added core ETL (extract, transform and load) integration capabilities, metadata management and improved job management.

In April 2008, Insight Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Georgian Partners, Goldman Sachs and other investors bought a majority interest in Syncsort Incorporated.[4] In 2013 Syncsort recruited Lonne Jaffe as CEO. Jaffe had previously served as Senior Vice President of corporate strategy at CA Technologies, and VP of strategy in the IBM software group.[5]

Also in 2013, Syncsort acquired Circle Computer Group,[6] whose product DL/2 facilitates migration of mainframe data, especially from IBM IMS instances to IBM's DB2 under z/OS.[7][8] In October 2013, Syncsort sold its data protection business to an investor group led by Bedford Venture Partners and Windcrest Partners. The spun off data protection business is now called Catalogic Software.[9]

In February 2015, Syncsort acquired William Data Systems, a network monitoring and security software company. In October 2015, Clearlake Capital Group announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire Syncsort.[10] The acquisition was completed in November 2015. In January 2016, Syncsort President, Josh Rogers, was appointed to the CEO position.[11]

In July 2017, Centerbridge Partners announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire Syncsort along with Vision Solutions. The two companies were combined into one company. The transaction closed in the third quarter of 2017.[12]

Syncsort announced a definitive agreement to acquire the software and data business of Pitney Bowes in August 2019 in a $700m transaction backed by affiliates of Centerbridge Partners, L.P. and Clearlake Capital Group, L.P.[13][14] The transaction was finalized in December 2019, expanding Syncsort's global presence to 2,000 employees worldwide, and approximately 11,000 customers.[1]

In May 2020, Syncsort rebranded itself as Precisely. As Precisely CEO Josh Rogers stated, “Precise and precision are key distinguishing characteristics of the types of software we’ve been delivering to the market and the systems they’ve been supported over the last couple of decades. With regard to high availability and security offerings, you need a high level of precision to support high availability between mission critical transactional applications. That system has to be highly precise in the way it does replication, in the way it handles failover, etc" [15][16][17]

Products
Product Type Description Platforms Introduced
Syncsort MFX Utility High speed data sort, join, copy. CPU offload to zIIP engines z/OS 1971[18]
Connect Data integration Integrate data seamlessly from legacy systems into next-gen cloud and data platforms including Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Azure Synapse Analytics, Cloudera, Databricks, Snowflake, Hadoop, Apache Kafka, Apache Spark Windows, Unix, Linux 2004
Ironstream Utility IBM i and z/OS forwarder to Splunk, ServiceNow, Micro Focus, Microsoft SCOM, Elastic and Kafka z/OS, IBM i (AS/400) 2014
Syncsort Network Management Monitoring Network and security monitoring z/OS, Linux, Windows 2015, through acquisition
Trillium Data quality Data cleansing & standardization, customer 360, scalable for big data Windows, Linux, z/OS 2016
Assure Security IBM i security Compliance monitoring, access control, data privacy & encryption, and security risk assessment IBM i (AS/400), Windows 2019
Spectrum Data Management Complete data management suite, data quality, integration, profiling and monitoring Windows, Linux 2019, through acquisition
EngageOne Customer Communication Management Various elements like personalized, interactive video, a chatbot, document composition and post composition Windows, Linux, z/Os 2019, through acquisition


gollark: I apologize for the SHEER rudeness of the following meme, however:
gollark: Orbital asking lasers.
gollark: Too bad, orbital asking lasers *have* been activated.
gollark: If people *actually* didn't mention anything unless someone explicitly asked for it, conversations would basically just be about one topic, and very boring and brief.
gollark: I didn't ask whether you asked. "Who asked" embodies an entirely unreasonable standard which nobody applies except to make some sort of ridiculous point - which is good, since if it *were* something people genuinely stuck to, it would kill off all conversation ever.

References
  1. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191202005756/en/Syncsort-Completes-Acquisition-Pitney-Bowes-Software-Data
  2. Bloomberg Businessweek, "Company Overview for Syncsort Incorporated," retrieved 2014-01-14.
  3. Johnson, Luanne, "Oral History of Duane Whitlow", Computer History Museum, Interviewed by Luanne Johnson, recorded 1998-05-08, retrieved 2014-01-14.
  4. Datanami, "Syncsort Expands Executive Management Team for Data Integration Business", 2013-07-01, retrieved 2014-01-20.
  5. http://www.datanami.com/datanami/2013-07-01/syncsort_expands_executive_management_team_for_data_integration_business.html Datanami, "Syncsort Expands Executive Management Team for Data Integration Business," 2013-07-01, retrieved 2013-10-30.
  6. Williams, Alex. "Syncsort Acquires Circle Computer Group As Companies Struggle To Get Data Off Ancient Mainframes." Techcrunch, 2013-09-30, retrieved 2014-01-14.
  7. Yost, Denny. "z/Product Profile:DL/2 From Circle Computer Group," Enterprise Systems Media, 2011-02-17, retrieved 2014-01-14.
  8. Nicole, Kristen. "Breaking Analysis: Syncsort’s New Acquisition Primes Partners for Real-Time Big Data," Silicon Angle, 2013-09-30, retrieved 2014-01-14.
  9. Denne, Scott. "Big Data Success Stories: Syncsort," Wall Street Journal blog, 2012-03-20, retrieved 2014-01-20.
  11. Gallant, John (January 11, 2016). "Q&A: Why Syncsort introduced the mainframe to Hadoop". InfoWorld. Retrieved October 5, 2018.
  12. http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170706005516/en
  13. Bartley, Paige (August 27, 2019), Syncsort fortifies data management portfolio with Pitney Bowes’ Software Solutions Pickup, 451 Research
  14. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190826005223/en/Syncsort-Acquires-Pitney-Bowes%E2%80%99-Software-Solutions-Business
  15. Woodie, Alex. "Precisely CEO Discusses the Rebrand from Syncsort". datanami.com. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  16. "Syncsort rebrands itself as Precisely". precisely.com. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  17. Woodie, Alex. "What's Behind Syncsort's Rebranding as Precisely". itjungle.com. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  18. Yost, Denny. "z/Product Profile:DL/2 From Circle Computer Group," Enterprise Systems Media, 2011-02-17, retrieved 2014-01-20.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.