IBM buy Exeros

IBM has bought data discovery software specialist Exeros. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Californian-based firm specialises in technology that helps to manage data centres. It automatically organises the data allowing users to understand patterns that emerge make better informed business or marketing decisions.

"All organisations today are faced with the daunting challenge of turning massive amounts of information into insights to guide their businesses, but many are held back by the complexity of corporate data sources," Ambuj Goyal, general manager for IBM's information management arm, said in a statement.

"The combination of IBM and Exeros will enable companies to more intelligently manage their data across all formats and computing platforms, creating a smarter enterprise."

The acquisition solidifies IBM's latest approach, linking to its recent "Information on Demand" scheme and to its "Business Analytics and Optimisation Consulting practice".

Ted Friedman, vice president for Gartner, said: "This acquisition supports IBM's IOD and Information Agenda vision, as a prerequisite for leverage of information assets is knowing what you have and how it all fits together. At a more technical level, Exeros providers technology for computing the mapping and transformation rules across disparate data structures. Organisations spend a huge amount of time determining these rules when they go to build data integration processes."

"We view the Exeros technology, therefore, as a feature that is useful in many contexts. This was purely a technology acquisition [as] Exeros had less than 25 direct customers."

Both companies confirmed that the "technologies will be preserved" so users will not have to upgrade to a new system, just continue to use their existing software.