IBM announced Tuesday that it will acquire Venetica to manage access to its DB2 Information Integrator for Content software.

Venetica is a content management software company specializing in unstructured data, which is the hard-to-pigeon-hole information contained in HTML (define), XML (define) and audio and video files. IBM already has technology in place to manage such data through its DB2 line, but it doesn't have the capability of grabbing information from other vendors.

Venetica, however, does have that capability. It provides access to unstructured data sources at competitors like Documentum, FileNet, Hummingbird, Open Text, Interwoven and Stellent through its VeniceBridge Wrapper integration product.

"Venetica added a lot, as far as the unstructured data sources, from the many different vendors," said Jon Prial, IBM DB2 information management vice president of marketing. "It really helps pull together a common, virtualized view of information for our customers."

The inclusion of Venetica's software into Information Integrator will also be used to sell other DB2 products: Content Manager, WebSphere Application Server, Business Integration and Portal, as well as IBM's Workplace. According to IBM officials, the company already has 625,000 companies worldwide using its information management software.

Prial wouldn't give a timeframe when the Venetica product will be available with Big Blue's brand, but he said the process of integrating the software would not be difficult.

"It's really just a matter of, initially, taking the product and branding it and putting on the IBM logo, so you wouldn't expect that to take an awful lot of time," Prial said.

Earlier this year, Venetica penned a similar agreement with IBM to make data repositories from other companies work in VeniceBridge.

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All 70 Venetica employees will remain onboard as future IBM employees. Officials from both companies would not divulge the price tag of the acquisition, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter.