(Ardent Software, Inc., Westboro, MA) A database vendor formed in 1998 as the merger of VMARK Software, Unidata and O2 Technology. Its products included the UniVerse and UniData databases and DataStage data warehouse utility. In 2000, Ardent was acquired by Informix, which later sold its database business to IBM and renamed itself Ascential Software Corporation, concentrating on asset management. See
UniVerse,
UniData,
DataStage and
VMARK.