08/02/2006

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).

ebizQ received the following details:

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.