IBM acquires SOA vendor Webify Solutions

02.08.2006
IBM has bought services-oriented architecture (SOA) vendor Webify Solutions Inc. and plans to make it a part of IBM's Software Group and WebSphere middleware product family. The move is designed to give IBM customers new options to more easily integrate existing specialized applications using SOA.

In an announcement Wednesday, IBM said it acquired the Austin-based company because Webify's SOA products for the insurance and health care industries will help IBM expand into other markets.

The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Before the acquisition, Webify was an IBM partner in providing SOA services.

SOA allows companies to reuse existing technologies, yielding greater efficiencies, cost savings and better productivity.

"Combining Webify and IBM, we feel, provides a lot of value to our customers," Robert LeBlanc, general manager of IBM's WebSphere software division, said in a conference call Wednesday with journalists. IBM will take key Webify technologies -- including its "fabric" architecture, which is designed to allow divergent applications to work together, and its regulatory compliance features -- and expand them into SOA offerings for a wider range of businesses, he said.

Webify provides hundreds of prebuilt industry-specific, standards-based accelerators, tools and frameworks to help users build their own SOA infrastructures. Those tools include modules designed to help health care companies comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and modules to help companies in the insurance industry meet specialized Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development guidelines.