IBM has acquired Guardium, a real-time provider of enterprise monitoring technology to secure and provide better business intelligence across the hundreds of databases that often exist in larger enterprises.
Guardium has established itself as one of the premiere data security companies. Its clients are a who’s who of the Global 100. Its technology is designed to protect from internal and external threats to the enterprise. It is known for its ability to provide data integrity for better governance and compliance.
As one of its executives said in an interview, Guardium provides a last line of defense against attacks, kind of like the “goal keepers of the data.”
Details of the acquisition were not disclosed but an Israeli newspaper said the deal is valued at $225 million.
IBM is banking on business analytics for future growth. As we report here often, the amount of information flowing into the enterprise is unprecedented but there are few companies that have the ability to quickly analyze this fragmented information and use it to make intelligent business decisions. For most, decisions are being made based upon incomplete information or data that has been corrupted in some manner.
IBM see Guardium as a way for it to provide a transparent view into the enterprise by providing a real-time watch on information. By protecting the information, Guardium gives companies the ability to access data that has not been tainted.
Guardium will become part of the IBM Information Management Software group, which has been on a bit of an acquisition binge in the past year. Earlier this year, IBM acquired SPSS, a statistics software company.
