IaaS -- sometimes referred to as Data-as-a-Service -- is a relatively new way of integrating data in a service-enabled fashion, much the same way that transactional systems are exposed as services in service-oriented architectures (SOAs). Experts say that IaaS is particularly valuable to users that may be widely dispersed but need to access information quickly. Early adopters of the methodology include emergency call centers and customer contact centers.
"One of the issues of integrating information when you've got widely distributed users is trying to get the performance of the integration to be fast enough," Gilpin said. "So one of the strategies that have been used in the IaaS wave is to pre-integrate the information and cache it in the memory."
That's where Tangosol comes in.
"The fact that Oracle acquired Tangosol is certainly a step in the right direction because the caching of the data is a critical component [for] an IaaS strategy," said Forrester analyst Noel Yuhanna.
There's a rising amount of interest in IaaS, Yuhanna said, and it's being driven by the fact that many organizations are desperately trying to get a handle on growing stores of structured and unstructured data in order to improve performance.
"IaaS becomes a very important play because if you decouple the application from the data, the application focuses on business logic," Yuhanna said. "Getting the data apart from the application is what IaaS is all about, and that is the reason why caching becomes a crucial requirement going forward."
Oracle last week announced its intention to buy Somerville, Mass.-based Tangosol, saying that it expects to close the deal sometime next month. Financial details of the acquisition -- Oracle's 28th in a multiyear buying spree that included the purchase of CRM giants PeopleSoft Corp. and Siebel Systems Inc. -- were not disclosed.
