IBM's Expansion Plans

IBM wishes to expand its Information on Demand strategy by adding the small company Princeton Softech to its acquisition list. Princeton Softech is a company specialized in data archiving and privacy compliance monitoring software and its acquisition by IBM will lead to an increase of the giant's data management offerings according to the news site InfoWorld.

As IBM is constantly reshaping its product offerings, both in terms of software and hardware, as a strategy to stay on top of the market trends, this acquisition of the small, 240-person company that makes software for data manipulation under privacy restrictions will let IBM customers use new tools when working with third party applications like dedicated database systems - Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server. Bernie Spang, director of data servers at IBM, explained that acquisition by saying that "as enterprises gather more information, they have to get it out to users more quickly and are constrained by more regulations". Princeton Softech's software can help companies comply with the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley regulations of data protection without making the actual information management any harder.

IBM's Information on Demand strategy simply refers to the fact that people need to get access to the desired data in a transparent manner, regardless of its native internal format, underlaying platform or physical location. Among the applications that the Princeton company will bring with it the data management software is the one that has the ability to test a data base for information inconsistencies. "In the test database, the actual information on employees, customers, or patients is masked so real data won't be leaked or corrupted during the test", according to Bernie Spang.

While financial terms are being kept secret, it is known that the deal will be closed later this year and after the acquisition is complete, the Princeton Softech's products will be integrated in the Information Management Software division from IBM.