IBM gets bold

By Alex Kayle for IBM
Johannesburg, 13 Mar 2009

IBM is aggressively investing millions into its research and development projects and is looking to acquire more businesses, says Zoran Hrustic, director of sales for IBM Software Group Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa.

IBM's Smart Software Symposium, held at The Campus, in Bryanston, gave an outline of the IT giant's acquisitions as part of its plan to strengthen its global footprint in the markets of business integration and application management.

“The middle of last year, we put in an aggressive investment plan, going after those companies that have the talent, innovation and capabilities to enrich our solutions and bring it to the market. We're a good example of how a company can be globally integrated and find the resource and skill, and then leverage the knowledge that exists elsewhere,” says Hrustic.

“IBM's strategy is to focus on open technologies and high-value solutions, deliver integration and innovation to clients and become the premier globally integrated enterprise.”

Bullish on acquisitions

IBM Software has made 52 software acquisitions since 2000, including eight in the first four months of 2008. Hrustic says for every one of these acquisitions, nobody was laid off, and IBM had opted to hire more people.

IBM is driving organic growth with strategic acquisitions through bold market entry, complementary point products, opportunistic consolidations and market leadership, he notes. One of the company's more significant acquisitions has been Cognos, which he says showed market leadership.

Last year, IBM bought Lotus Net Integration Tech, for SME server solutions; Tivoli's Encentuate, for identity and access management software; WebSphere's Ilog, for business cross-industry solutions; Rational's Telelogic, for complex embedded systems; and Information Management's Solid Information Tech, for information access solutions.