IBM Completes Acquisition of Venetica

SOMERS, NY — Oct 7, 2004 — IBM has completed its acquisition of Venetica, a privately held company based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The acquisition further strengthens IBM’s leadership in the information integration space, a key strategic priority for IBM’s Business Integration efforts and the company’s on demand computing initiative. IBM announced a definitive agreement to acquire Venetica on August 26, 2004.

Now that the acquisition is complete, IBM will:

• Integrate Venetica’s business operations and employees into the IBM Information Management Software division, under the leadership of general manager, Janet Perna;
• Integrate Venetica VeniceBridge technology into IBM’s DB2 Information Integrator family of products, which complement other IBM middleware offerings, including DB2 Content Manager, WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Portal, WebSphere Business Integration and IBM’s Workplace platform;
• Make available DB2 Information Integrator Content Edition, the new IBM product built on Venetica VeniceBridge technology, which provides a common interface over diverse content repositories and workflow systems, making them look and act as one system. It will be marketed and sold worldwide in late November through IBM direct sales and its business partners.

Venetica is a leading provider of enterprise content integration software that enables organizations to access unstructured information such as business documents, still images, digital media and Web pages, and integrate it into existing business processes. The software addresses the growing customer need to gain real-time access to business information that is scattered across the enterprise. As a result, organizations can reduce the cost and complexity of business-critical initiatives such as improving customer service, complying with regulations, and consolidating operations following a merger.

Without having to rip or replace infrastructure, applications can quickly integrate with multiple repositories that contain documents, images, reports and other digital assets that are stored in the DB2 Content Manager family, Lotus Notes, Documentum, FileNet, Hummingbird, Interwoven, Open Text, Stellent and other repositories.

IBM made the decision to acquire Venetica based on increasing demand from customers and partners to extend its information integration capabilities to help companies manage all forms of information across the enterprise. According to industry analysts, the opportunity for business integration software is expected to exceed $10 billion by 2006. IDC also estimates that companies are now spending as much as 40 percent of their annual IT budgets on integration

About IBM’s Information Management Portfolio
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