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IBM Acquires Webify
ARMONK, New York- Aug 02,
2006 - IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it acquired Webify Solutions,
an Austin, Texas-based, privately held provider of industry-specific
software and services for building service oriented architectures
(SOA). An SOA is a way of reusing a company's existing technology
to more closely align with business goals helping to result in
greater efficiencies, cost savings and productivity. Financial
terms were not disclosed.
This acquisition builds upon IBM's strategy
to take advantage of its strengths in business consulting, IT
services and software to develop high-value, repeatable tools
that help companies optimize and transform their businesses.
Webify technology will be immediately integrated into IBM Software
Group under the WebSphere brand -- which has experienced 32 consecutive
quarters of revenue growth and double-digit revenue growth for
the first two quarters of 2006. It will also be available through
IBM Global Services offerings.
Webify software helps accelerate
the development and deployment of applications that business
users need to quickly respond to
market and competitive pressures. It provides hundreds of industry-specific,
pre-built standards-based accelerators, tools and frameworks.
Webify's offerings help solve business problems that are specific
to a given
industry such as HIPAA compliance for healthcare companies and
ACORD standards in the insurance industry.
IBM's acquisition of
Webify strengthens its leadership in service oriented architecture,
which helps a company reuse existing technology
to more closely align it with business goals, resulting in
greater efficiencies, cost savings and productivity. By bringing
together
IBM's development and use of open industry standards with Webify's
expertise in semantics, IBM can better solve common business
problems in a given vertical industry. Together, IBM and Webify
will help
businesses run more efficiently by accelerating the integration
of business processes and the sharing and reuse of proven applications
and best practices.
Webify software combines these semantics
with industry-specific tools and frameworks to help customers
develop composite business
applications to grow revenue, decrease costs and comply with
government and industry regulations. Composite business applications
borrow
capabilities from existing applications to develop new functionality
not found in any single existing applications. These proprietary
applications were originally designed without the ability
to communicate and share business functionality with one another.
The combination
of IBM's WebSphere integration middleware and services capabilities
along with Webify's industry expertise can allow customers
to more easily and efficiently link complete business processes
and share
data regardless of underlying technologies.
Webify software
will be delivered as part of the IBM WebSphere portfolio, which
includes WebSphere Integration Developer,
WebSphere Process Server and the WebSphere Service Registry
and Repository.
IBM Global Services (IGS) will use Webify
software to deliver industry-focused reusable services to clients.
IGS will
gain immediate access to
Webify's extensive library of composite business services
to help speed delivery of mission-critical industry applications.
These
capabilities will complement the recently announced IBM
Global Business Solution Center (GBSC) in India that
is dedicated
to the development of SOA-based composite business services.
In
addition,
composite business services offered by IGS will be listed
in
the IBM SOA Business Catalog.
"Customers in different industries
are solving different business problems. Healthcare companies
need to comply with HIPAA regulations
while insurance companies are seeking to streamline
claims processing," said
Robert LeBlanc, general manager, IBM WebSphere
Software. "Webify's
industry-specific tools, models and frameworks
will complement IBM's industry leading WebSphere
software
and the deep industry
expertise of IBM Global Services to better help
insurance and healthcare customers use SOA to
solve business
problems unique to their industries."
"This marks an exciting moment in
our company's history," said
Manoj Saxena, Webify Chairman and CEO. "Joining
IBM will help propel our vision of helping
clients achieve SOA-based business
transformation and it provides an accelerated
path to market for our best-in-class products
and technology.
IBM is focused on setting
the standard for next-generation SOA solutions
and we look forward to bringing our experience
and commitment
to this goal."
Mr. Saxena will continue
to manage Webify and will undertake additional
responsibilities
for IBM's SOA
strategy, reporting
to Mr. LeBlanc.
Through this acquisition, 120 Webify employees
based in Austin, Texas and Mumbai, India
will become IBM
employees.
About
IBM
For additional information please visit www.ibm.com/soa.
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