Syncsort
Private | |
Industry | Data Management |
Founder | Duane Whitlow and Stan Rintel |
Headquarters | Pearl River, New York, USA |
Key people | Josh Rogers (CEO) |
Number of employees | ~620 (2018)[1] |
Website |
syncsort |
Syncsort Incorporated is a global software company specializing in Big Data, high speed sorting products, and data integration software and services, for Hadoop, Microsoft Windows, UNIX, Linux, and mainframe systems. According to the company, Syncsort products are used by thousands of companies worldwide, with over 12,000 deployments in 70 countries.[2]
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, Syncsort 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]
Products
Product | Type | Description | Platforms | Introduced |
---|---|---|---|---|
Syncsort MFX | Utility | High speed data sort, join, copy. CPU offload to zIIP engines | z/OS | 1971[13] |
DMX/DMExpress | Data integration | Extract, transform and load (ETL). Editions: Sort, App Mod, ETL. | Windows, Unix, Linux | 2004 |
DMX-h | Hadoop ETL & Data Processing | Hadoop sort, Extract, Transform and Load, and data preparation | Hadoop | 2013 |
Ironcluster | Cloud Data integration as a service | Hadoop ETL app AWS[14] | Amazon EC2 | 2013 |
DL/2 | Legacy data migration | IMS & VSAM data migration | z/OS | 2013, through acquisition |
VS/2 | Legacy data migration | VSAM data migration | z/OS | 2013, through acquisition |
Ironstream | Utility | z/OS forwarder to Splunk | z/OS | 2014 |
ZPSaver Suite | Utility | Offload copy and compress to zIIP engines | z/OS | 2014 |
ZEN Suite | Monitoring | Network and security monitoring | z/OS, Linux, Windows | 2015, through acquisition |
CilaSoft | Utility | Logging and security audit | As400, Windows | 2018, through acquisition |
References
- ↑ Aslett, Matt (September 12, 2018), Syncsort outlines consolidated portfolio for data optimization, assurance and integration, 451 Research
- ↑ Bloomberg Businessweek, "Company Overview for Syncsort Incorporated," retrieved 2014-01-14.
- 1 2 3 Johnson, Luanne, "Oral History of Duane Whitlow", Computer History Museum, Interviewed by Luanne Johnson, recorded 1998-05-08, retrieved 2014-01-14.
- ↑ Datanami, "Syncsort Expands Executive Management Team for Data Integration Business", 2013-07-01, retrieved 2014-01-20.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Williams, Alex. "Syncsort Acquires Circle Computer Group As Companies Struggle To Get Data Off Ancient Mainframes." Techcrunch, 2013-09-30, retrieved 2014-01-14.
- ↑ Yost, Denny. "z/Product Profile:DL/2 From Circle Computer Group," Enterprise Systems Media, 2011-02-17, retrieved 2014-01-14.
- ↑ Nicole, Kristen. "Breaking Analysis: Syncsort’s New Acquisition Primes Partners for Real-Time Big Data," Silicon Angle, 2013-09-30, retrieved 2014-01-14.
- ↑ Denne, Scott. "Big Data Success Stories: Syncsort," Wall Street Journal blog, 2012-03-20, retrieved 2014-01-20.
- ↑
- ↑ Gallant, John (January 11, 2016). "Q&A: Why Syncsort introduced the mainframe to Hadoop". InfoWorld. Retrieved October 5, 2018.
- ↑ http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170706005516/en
- ↑ Yost, Denny. "z/Product Profile:DL/2 From Circle Computer Group," Enterprise Systems Media, 2011-02-17, retrieved 2014-01-20.
- ↑ Database Trends and Applications, "Syncsort and Cloudera Partner to Helps Enterprises Leverage Mainframe Big Data, " 2013-09-30, retrieved 2014-01-20.