This is the 2nd acquisition in a month. CastIron systems and Sterling Commerce. The largest in almost 2 years after Cognos in 2008. $1.4B for Sterling Commerce.. Wow! On the contrary to my expectation in the last few weeks that IBM would gobble up another BPM product like Pega Systems or Tibco, IBM goes in a totally different direction from BPM and goes to B2B side of their business. WebSphere Partner Gateway (WPG) has been a laggard for IBM in terms of product strength which led to weak sales of WPG, it totally makes sense to acquire someone strong in this area. This acquisition gets them 18000 new B2B customers, most of them probably are already IBM customers in other product areas, which makes it all the better for IBM. Well..I am really happy with the deal. Way to go IBM..
Cheers,
Steve Lokam