Microsoft said on Monday it is buying the assets of Rosetta Biosoftware, a unit of Merck, as part of an effort to expand into the life sciences software arena.
The Rosetta technology will be used to add genetic and genomic data management abilities to Microsoft's recently announced Amalga Life Sciences effort.
As part of the deal, Merck will now become an Amalga customer, Microsoft said, Merck will also "provide strategic input to Microsoft on the direction and evolution of new solutions incorporating Rosetta Biosoftware technologies."
"This agreement establishes a stable and sustainable platform for the Rosetta Biosoftware technology," Merck Research Laboratories VP Rupert Vessey said in a statement.
Microsoft, which has a separate Amalga product family for hospitals, announced in April that it would offer Microsoft Amalga Life Sciences as an effort to help in the drug research software arena. The tools are designed to help manage and analyze the large amounts of data gathered in the process of designing new drugs.
The Merck deal is expected to close at the end of June 2009, and the new Amalga Life Sciences platform incorporating Rosetta Biosoftware technologies should be available in early 2010, Microsoft said.
Microsoft has renamed its enterprise health care business to something with a whole lot fewer Scrabble points.
The software maker said the Azyxxi product line, which Microsoft acquired in July 2006, will now be known as Amalga.
"One of the health care enterprise's biggest issues is that providers and executives can't access patient information when, where and how they need it," Microsoft health unit general manager Steve Shihadeh said in a statement. "Microsoft's Amalga products offer proven solutions that bring together information from across the health care enterprise into one, easily accessible view. In fact, the name 'Amalga' is based on the Latin word 'amalgama,' meaning to bring together different elements."
The reaction in the CNET News.com newsroom to Microsoft's latest name change was mixed.
"Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster they got rid of the awful, unspellable and unpronounceable name "Azyxxi," wrote one co-worker.
Another was less impressed. "With overtones of 'amoeba' and 'neuralgia', I'd say they've still got a ways to go on the naming thing," he quipped.
One bonus: Microsoft won't have to pay a town to rename itself after the new brand. There's already an Amalga, Utah.
Microsoft has been trying to improve its product names, with notable successes Silverlight and Popfly, as well as a few misses like Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance.
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