September 1, 2006
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IBM, the world's largest computer and Web services company, said on Tuesday that it has acquired privately held Webify Solutions to expand in the fast-growing market of integrating corporate software systems.
By Reuters
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. IBM said 120 employees of Webify, based in Austin, Texas, will become IBM employees. Webify has operations in Austin and Mumbai, India.
Webify helps insurers, health care companies and banks, among others, share data among various software systems over the Web that otherwise would not be able to communicate with one another, IBM said in a statement.
Sales related to such so-called service-oriented architecture, or SOA, systems helped fuel Q2 growth of 5% in IBM's software and Web business, traditionally the company's most profitable unit.
IBM's approach to SOA "means not going to the customer and asking, 'Do you want another 3 pounds of software?'" said Kristof Kloeckner, vice president of strategy and technology for IBM's software group.
"We are saying, 'What are your business components, which ones are important to you, which are becoming an impediment to conducting your business?" Kloeckner said. "This is really about making services repeatable and to a degree predictable."
IBM, based in Armonk, N.Y., has made about 40 acquisitions in the past three years, including $2.02 billion of purchases last year.
Of last year's 16 acquisitions, 10 were in Web software, IBM said. The company has said it sees additional acquisitions in Web software and services, two areas it considers the most profitable.
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