Microsoft buys Jerusalem start-up Zoomix

"Microsoft's additional investment in Israel takes our Research & Development center into the field of solutions for databases."

By SHARON WROBEL
microsoft 88 (photo credit: )
microsoft 88
(photo credit: )
Microsoft Corporation has snapped up Jerusalem-based data quality start-up Zoomix Ltd. in what marks the software giant's second deal in Israel in a week. Although the price tag of the deal was not disclosed, market estimates of the purchase price range between $20-30 million. "Microsoft's additional investment in Israel takes our Research &Development center into the field of solutions for databases, a field that is growing rapidly and is very strategic for Microsoft International. Zoomix will contribute a critical layer of data improvement to Microsoft's SQL Server Data Platform," said Moshe Lichtman, vice president of Microsoft International and president of the software company's R&D center in Israel. "This capability will enable organizations to meet the requirements of complex information systems, and to streamline business processes, and is therefore expected to have a great impact on the organization's bottom line." Zoomix prides itself for the development of a new approach to data quality. The system uses guided self-learning technology to parse, match, classify and clean data, and applies this knowledge to every new piece of information fed into the system, even if it has not encountered similar data before. Under the terms of the acquisition, Zoomix's development staff will join the Microsoft research and development center in Israel, and the company's solutions will be added to solutions of the Microsoft SQL Server group. "Our goal at Zoomix is to leverage new, sophisticated technological approaches to address critical data quality challenges in-line with enterprise business processes. Microsoft has the vision and the business scale required to maximize the potential of Zoomix's core technologies by building them into data quality solutions which will provide in-line data improvement capabilities for a variety of applications and industries," said Amir Biran, CEO of Zoomix. "The company's employees are excited about the technological and business challenges that they are anticipating upon becoming part of Microsoft." Zoomix was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Jerusalem, with sales operations in the US and the UK. Last week Microsoft announced that it had struck an agreement to purchase the 50.1 percent stake it doesn't already own in the MSN Israel online portal from Internet Gold Ltd. for an undisclosed sum.