As the last of the pure-play ETL vendors, and one that is also successful and profitable, it is highly likely Informatica will be the target of an acquisition by a larger software/consulting group within the next few months. It is a question of ‘when’, not ‘if’.

But who is Informatica and why does a company that has been progressively acquiring others over the past few years (including Applimation earlier this year), seems to have a bright future, and is listed in the Leaders quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for data integration tools become the target of other predators?