If information is the life-blood of an organisation then how come most companies simply have piles of data?

It's a moot question and one that can only be explained by the pace of change. You implement one application and, as soon as it's complete, it needs to be integrated into another one, another one and, finally, the web and back again.

All this leaves a pile of dirty data, piles of unattended data and piles of data that you simply don't have the time, or indeed the wherewithal, to tackle.

It's a sign of the times but one that companies are increasingly keen to put right through monster data cleansing and re-purposing projects that will, they hope, deliver tangible results and benefits.

That's the suggestion from IDC's latest study anyway. It claims that between now and 2006 the data distribution, migration and re-purposing (DDMR) market is going to experience considerable growth.

In 2001, IDC says, the DDMR market grew by a healthy 11.2 per cent giving it a value of $1.03bn. However, great things lie ahead. IDC reckons that by 2006 it will be worth a massive $2.2bn, and that's impressive growth.

Strangely, however, it is not the usual suspects that are going to benefit from this explosion.

The smaller, specialist firms, to which most organisations have been turning for years, are said to be on the wane, while larger companies, typically bundling such solutions with every product they push through the door, are gathering steam.

Along with many companies associated with the tech industry, IDC notes with pleasure that the data cleanliness issue is finally taking precedence within integration projects, which is driving a large slice of this growth.

Similarly, the data profiling market is growing in demand as companies look to interpret data from a multitude of disparate sources.

This has a further benefit: it means that the data mining market can expect a fillip and, naturally, the database vendors will be happy with that.