Tibco acquires Velosel for master data management technology

Tibco Software on Monday announced it acquired Velosel, a provider of master data management software. The application integration company will add Velosel's technology, which creates a master data hub to synchronize information between retailers and manufacturers in the consumer goods and retail industries.

According to Neeraj Gokhale, founder of Velosel, there is $40 billion of pricing and product inconsistencies between retailers and manufacturers that needs to be resolved.

"It is critical to create a consistent master data repository to solve the challenge," Gokhale said.

The synergy between Tibco's data integration technology and master data hubs from Velosel also resides in recent strategic business initiatives to grow revenues through cross selling and upselling.

Connie Moore, an analyst with Forrester Research, said the acquisition of Velosel is all about the improving economy.

"Master data management is a technology that contributes to a company's ability to grow," Moore said.

When the economy started improving, companies started to shift strategic focus from cost reduction and efficiency to increasing top-line revenues, getting products out to market, and improving customer service, according to Moore.

In the process IT spending is lining up along those lines. Tibco's acquisition will allow it to compete against the likes of SAP and IBM, two companies that also recently acquired master data management technology.

The Velosel technology, which will be marketed under the name Collaborative Information Manager, combines both a federated or virtualized data management and a centralized data repository architecture.

"We approach this as a business process problem. The process defines whether or not data needs to be centralized and syndicated or federated," Gokhale said.

The Collaborative Information Manager suite is shipping now.