IBM Acquires Lombardi Software

IBM gave itself something nice for Christmas with a holiday acquisition of Austin's Lombardi Software, a company that makes software for automating functions such as supply chain management and human resources.

The companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal. The acquisition gives IBM one of the leaders in business-process management (BPM) software and services, a market that's worth $1.7 billion now and could be worth as much as $3 billion by 2013.

In 2008, Lombardi reported that their revenues almost doubled, with a 47 percent gain over 2007. Lombardi's customers include the U.S. government, Ford, ING Direct, AFLAC, and T-Mobile.

"Lombardi’s had a long-standing technical partnership with IBM - we were one of the first vendors in the BPM space to deliver a product running on WebSphere," CEO Rob Favaron wrote on his company blog. "We understand IBM’s strengths and we know how they complement ours as well. We also know that there is a great fit for both Teamworks and Blueprint into the overall IBM BPM portfolio."