IBM Closes on Acquisition of Platform Computing, Snaps Up Green Hat

Technology giant IBM announced it has completed the acquisition of Platform Computing, a privately held company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. On Oct. 11, 2011, IBM announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the company, a provider of cluster, grid and cloud management software for distributed computing environments. The company will be integrated into IBM’s Systems and Technology Group.

Platform Computing’s technical and distributed computing management software is designed to help clients create, integrate and manage shared computing environments that are used in compute- and data-intensive applications such as simulations, computer modeling and analytics. These technical and high performance computing (HPC) applications can help fuel product development, business decisions and science in financial services, manufacturing, digital media, oil and gas, life sciences, government, research and education. 

“The acquisition of Platform Computing will help accelerate IBM’s growth in smarter computing–a key initiative in IBM’s Smarter Planet strategy–by extending the reach of our HPC offerings into the high growth segment of technical computing,” said Helene Armitage, general manager of IBM Systems Software. “Our intent is to enable clients to uncover insights from growing volumes of data so they can take actions that optimize business results.”

By combining Platform Computing’s software with IBM high performance systems and software, IBM said it can better serve enterprise clients who are turning to technical computing to accelerate application performance, improve infrastructure flexibility and reduce time to results. IBM also said it intends to support Platform Computing’s software on heterogeneous systems and would continue to work with many of Platform Computing’s existing partners. 

Last week IBM announced it had acquired Green Hat, a software quality and testing solutions provider jointly headquartered in London, England, and Wilmington, Del. The Green Hat software testing solutions will also be offered through IBM Global Business Services’ Application Management Services (AMS). AMS provides strategy, design, implementation, testing and managed services for application virtualization to accelerate customer results. Upon the acquisition close, Green Hat will join IBM’s Rational Software business. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.