Decision Nº M/05/011 from Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, 2005-04-20

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Parties: Ascential,IBM
• Date: 20 April 2005
• Decision Date: 20 April 2005
• Status: Preliminary investigation (Phase 1)
• Court: Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (Ireland)
• Decision Number: M/05/011

1

Determination No. M/05/011 of the Competition Authority, 20th

April 2005, under Section 21 ofthe Competition Act, 2002.

Notification No. M/05/011- IBM/Ascential

Introduction

1. On the 24th of March 2005 the Competition Authority, in accordance

with Section 18 (1) of the Competition Act, 2002 (“the Act”) was

notified, on a mandatory basis, of a proposal whereby Ironbridge

Acquisition Corporation (“Ironbridge”), a wholly owned subsidiary of

IBM Corporation (“IBM”), would acquire Ascential Software

Corporation (“Ascential”).

The Parties

2. Ironbridge, the acquirer, is an acquisition vehicle set up by IBM to

facilitate the proposed acquisition of Ascential. IBM is active

worldwide in the development, production, and marketing of a

variety of information technology solutions. IBM’s business

offerings include systems (servers and storage systems), software

and services (business consulting and IT infrastructure services).

Currently IBM has a limited offering in the data integration software

market. Namely they offer a product with limited extract,

transform and load (“ETL”) capability

3. Ascential, the target, is active in the development and marketing of

data integration software solutions. Ascential’s offerings enable

customers to automate the integration of data, refining and

transforming the data from disparate sources into integrated and

consistent data that can be managed and analysed. In 2004

Ascential generated turnover of [less than $500,000] in the State.

4. The data integration software market includes four types of

software according to industry analysts IDC. The four types of

software are: (i) data analysis and reengineering tools; (ii)

replication and synchronisation software; (iii) extract, transform

and load (“ETL”) software and (iv) data quality software. The

functionality of Ascential’s data integration software offerings

extends mostly to the ETL functionality but also offers aspects of

the type of software described in (i) and (iv).