IBM has acquired Cast Iron Systems to provide customers with a range of ways to integrate their on-premise systems with Cloud-based application services without needing to undertake expensive custom coding.
While the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, Big Blue will take on the 75 staff currently employed by the privately-held company based in Mountain View, California.
Craig Hayman, general manager of IBM’s WebSphere product line, said: "The combination of IBM and Cast Iron Systems will make it easy for clients to integrate business applications, no matter where those applications reside."
Cast Iron has sold physical and virtual application integration appliances since 2001, offering one of the first out-of-the-box systems to integrate Salesforce.com and Oracle CRM. It also recently launched its OmniConnect Cloud-based integration-as-a-service offering to take on rivals such as Boomi, Pervasive Software and DataDirect. Existing customers include Allianz, NEC and Time Warner.
Dana Gardner, president and principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions, said of the move: "IBM needs to make sure the core value of integration – a mainstay of its WebSphere brands – does not slide up and out of the enterprise data centre and then become controlled by the likes of Cloud leaders Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Salesforce.com. I guess we can think of Cast Iron as a way to bring WebSphere to Cloud integrations.”
The purchase will also bolster IBM’s DataPower SOA appliance family and its Lombardi acquisition’s business process management software suite, she added.
"Building more Cast Iron systems and appliances using IBM hardware and software infrastructure can go a long way to cutting the total costs of providing integration hubs," Gardner said.
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