Purchase beefs up IBM data-analysis line

IBM is continuing to beef up its data-management software line, now with the acquisition of SRD Software, which builds tools to create a profile of a person from multiple data sources.

Terms of the transaction, which was made public Friday, were not disclosed. SRD, a 20-year-old company with 50 employees, is the seventh company IBM has bought since 2001 in the information management area.

IBM said that it intends to integrate SRD's software into its business intelligence tools line, which allows people to query and analyze information from large databases.

SRD's tools are designed to spot relationships between disparate pieces of information relating to an individual.

The Las Vegas company has developed applications that can be customized for tasks such as fraud detection and compiling data for customer-facing applications, such as support and sales. Law enforcement organizations, for example, can use the software to collate information from other agencies.

Over the past four years, IBM's $14 billion software group has set a pace of regular acquisitions, generally of smaller companies that have already written tools to work with IBM's infrastructure software. SRD is the 20th software company Big Blue has bought since 2001.