Big Blue Goes Shopping in Norway

Looking to add directory integration tools to products within its revamped
Software Group, IBM on Tuesday announced a deal to acquire
privately-held Metamerge. Financial terms of the deal were not released.

Big Blue said technology from the Norway-based Metamerge would be integrated
immediately into its software portfolio to help customers integrate user,
application and network resource information across different computing
systems.

The Metamerge Integrator, which is written in Java, combines software for
database and directory integration, provisioning, web services and message
bus technologies. It runs on Windows, Unix and Linux and supports most
common scripting languages and Internet standards, making it a perfect fit
for IBM’s WebSphere Web Services push.

IBM said the Metamerge directory integration software, which includes
metadirectory tools, would be fit into this security products portfolio.
Metadirectories connect data from disparate sources across an organization.

IBM said the directory infrastructure created by Metamerge would be
integrated and sold across four software brands — WebSphere, DB2, Lotus and
Tivoli.