IBM Adds Think Dynamics To Boost Systems-Management Unit

IBM on Wednesday acquired software vendor Think Dynamics Inc., and says its new acquisition's products for allocating computers, disks, and middleware to specific workloads can help its Tivoli systems-management unit. No terms were disclosed. The deal follows IBM's $2.1 billion purchase of Rational Software Corp. in February.

Think Dynamics, a privately held company with 36 employees, will become part of IBM's software group, and nearly all staffers will be retained as part of IBM's Toronto Software Laboratory, which employs 2,000 people. IBM plans to increase the number of staff working on development of Think Dynamics' software to 100, says IBM general manager Robert LeBlanc. "We see it as being very critical technology," he says.

Large computer vendors, including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Sun Microsystems, have been acquiring or striking deals with independent software vendors as part of an effort to develop systems that can quickly transfer computing resources from low-priority workloads to important ones. Sun last year acquired privately held Terraspring, which also licensed technology to HP. Think Dynamics has relationships with EMC, HP, and Oracle, according to IBM. In March, Microsoft named Think Dynamics as one of a handful of software vendors working with the company on its Dynamic Systems Initiative, a plan for developing applications programmed for better management under Windows.

According to IBM, Think Dynamics' software supports industry standards such as Web services, the Open Grid Services Architecture, and Java 2 Enterprise Edition.