IBM software sticks to the plan for 2010

From CNET News.com: IBM's software business contributes $20 billion of IBM's revenue and 40 percent of its profits. Suffice to say, it's an important part of Big Blue's market strategy to ensure that the software division performs at or above expectations every year.

Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive, joined IBM in 1974 and has helped shape the software business as its grown to more than 50,000 employees, including 25,000 software developers and 15,000 sales and technical support personnel in more than 150 countries. That total includes the products and personnel from the more than 50 companies IBM has acquired since 2000.

In 2009 alone, IBM acquired no fewer than five companies: Lombardi, a privately held provider of business process management (BPM) software, data discovery software firm Exeros, database security firm Guardium, security provider Ounce Labs, and analytics provider SPSS.

The company also launched a number of cloud-oriented products and services in 2009, including a new lab in Hong Kong, a Cloud Academy program designed to help educators and students pursue cloud-computing initiatives and better take advantage of collaboration technology in their studies; and a number of additions to the LotusLive hosted collaboration service.

View: Article @ Source Site