I couldn’t have said it better myself, so I won’t. Never mind the Borg, IBM is coming over like Santa Claus at the end of 05, with a sackful of money.
The acquisition of Micromuse propels IBM into the heart of the telecoms operational support system market, where it is weak from a market penetration perspective, flagships like Orange notwithstanding. Cross-sell and growth opportunities are significant.
IBM finally has a solid network services management story.
Related stories: CA acquires Concord, June 2005.
Prediction: IBM and HP are going head to head in the telecoms market in 2006. Companies in the sector should be able to cut some amazing software deals…
Implication: IBM is also stepping up competition with Cisco again, after a period where the firms were eager to come across as partners rather than competitors. Datapower and Netcool – application oriented networking, indeed.
James Robertson says:
December 22, 2005 at 2:51 pm
You might want to have a look here:
http://www.cdegroot.com/blog/2005/12/21/ibm-buys-micromuse/
Quallaby, which was bought by Micromuse last year, sells the Proviso system, which seems to be part of the rationale for the buy. That system is largely written in Cincom Smalltalk