IBM to acquire ILOG

IBM and ILOG announced today that IBM will be acquiring ILOG for €10/share, or about $US340 million in total.

IBM’s goal is to integrate ILOG’s business rules technology into their existing BPM and SOA offerings:

When completed, the acquisition of ILOG will strengthen IBM’s BPM and SOA position by providing customers a full set of rule management tools for complete information and application lifecycle management across a comprehensive platform including IBM’s leading WebSphere application development and management platform.

The funny part is that the IBM press release take two paragraphs to explain what BPM is, and how business rules are used in the context of BPM, indicating just how niche these technologies still are in the broader business scope.

This may not be good news for ILOG’s other BPM partners; one less independent BRMS company means less choice when it comes to putting your processes and rules together.