IBM Corp. on Wednesday announced the acquisition of document management software vendor Green Pasture Software Inc., the fourth acquisition for IBMs DB2 software group since last November.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Green Pasture will become a part of IBMs Enterprise Content Management software business and its software for editing, managing and collaborating on multiple documents simultaneously will be sold by IBM.
Green Pastures software is used to manage relationships between different document types, such as spreadsheets, multimedia files and computer-aided design (CAD) references.
With the acquisition, IBM adds a pure-play document management player to its ECM portfolio. IBM has partnered with Green Pasture for the past 2 years, according to Brett MacIntyre, vice president of enterprise content management for IBM, in Somers, N.Y.
“We didnt have capabilities for compound-document management, where the work process is the document,” MacIntyre said. “This acquisition gives us that.”
According to MacIntyre, the technology is particularly useful for the creation of documents like technical manuals and annual reports and is used mostly by the government as well as by financial services, pharmaceutical, chemical and manufacturing companies.
IBM will sell the Green Pasture technology as IBM DB2 Document Manager, which will be available Friday. MacIntyre said the technology is already integrated with the rest of the DB2 Enterprise Content Management product line based on the work from the companies past partnership.
The Green Pasture acquisition is only the latest move by IBM to bolster its DB2 Information Management division. Other past acquisitions include Aptrix, for Web content management in June, and Tarian Software , a records management company, bought in November last year. Big Blue also purchased CrossAccess Corp. for information integration in October.
MacIntyre said IBM has the most complete ECM technology stack on the market, but will make more acquisitions and develop new products based on customer demand.
Editors Note: This story was updated to include information and comments from company officials.