IBM has acquired DataPower, a provider of products to
speed up and improve the security of electronic transaction
processing.
The acquisition, for an undisclosed sum, will be used to expand
further IBM’s offering to customers in the Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA) space, which sees business operations being more
closely integrated with IT.
Analyst group Gartner says SOA will provide the basis for 80% of
new software development projects by 2008.
IBM said DataPower is a leading provider of SOA appliance
products, which enable integration and help provide security of web
services. It now plans to introduce a family of SOA appliances
based on DataPower technology.
DataPower products include the XI50 Integration Device, which
streamlines SOA infrastructures; the XA35 XML Accelerator, which
offloads XML processing; and the XS40 XML Security Gateway, which
helps provide message-level web services security.
DataPower’s security features complement the SOA security
management capabilities of IBM's Tivoli software, said Big
Blue.