Kicking off a year that's likely to see an uptick in Cloud consolidation and acquistions, IBM is buying Green Hat, maker of automated testing tools for integration, SOA implementations and Cloud-based deployments.
Green Hat offers a virtual test environment platform that allows development teams to test applications without the need to set up multiple physical labs.
Kristof Kloeckner, general manager at IBM Rational, said:
“This acquisition extends IBM's leadership in driving business agility and software quality by changing the way enterprises can manage software development cost, test cycle time and risk. Green Hat's application virtualisation capabilities will help our customers accelerate their delivery of business critical software. ”
The Green Hat products will be rolled into IBM's Rational division. Peter Cole, chief executive officer at Green Hat, said:
“We are looking forward to bringing Green Hat's innovative application virtualisation and continuous integration testing expertise to IBM customers. ”
It’s a good move by IBM, reckons Angela Eager of research firm TechMarketView:
“Green Hat’s offerings allows developers to test their projects in the cloud, saving them the considerable cost and effort involved in setting up their own in-house test and simulation environments. The higher profile and greater resources that will be available to Green Hat as part of IBM is good news for the company but could put pressure on the testing part of UK-based NCC Group. ”
