Amid the frenzy to purchase gifts, heat the eggnog, and count the hoof beats of Santas reindeer, little notice was given to an important mid-December acquisition of a software firm by IBM.
Big Blue, which continues to quietly add to a growing array of software beneath the corporate tree, this time took home Software Artistry, a maker of customer support and help desk software, as well as sales force automation systems, in a deal valued at about $200 million.
Software Artistrys products will be offered through IBMs Tivoli Systems group, which provides systems and network management. Thus, Tivoli, which competes with Computer Associates and its popular Unicenter network management software, strengthens its capability for intra-enterprise IT support. Look for more strategic acquisitions of software applications by IBM, whose network computing strategy is a far cry from the old Big Blues focus on hardware and mainframe.
