Platform Computing Has Been Acquired by IBM
About Platform Computing
- Platform Computing, a privately-held company, was the leading independent provider of cluster, grid and cloud management software, and was widely viewed as the vendor of choice for compute- and data-intensive applications
- The company’s products were considered “mission critical” technology in the electronics and financial services industries; Platform also had a strong presence in manufacturing, energy, life sciences and government
- Headquartered in Toronto, Platform had approximately 500 employees with other major offices in Beijing, San Jose and Xi’an
- Founded in 1997, Platform never raised outside capital and was self-funded by the founding team
About IBM
- IBM Corporation (NYSE: IBM) is a global diversified information technology firm
- One of the largest technology firms in the world, IBM provides IT hardware and software as well as infrastructure, hosting and consulting services
- In 2008, IBM launched the “Smarter Planet” initiative, which seeks to deploy the company’s IT products and services to cultivate economic growth, societal progress and sustainable development
- At the time of the acquisition, IBM employed approximately 425,000 people in over 200 countries worldwide
- The company is headquartered in Armonk, NY
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IBM considers the acquisition of Platform Computing to be a strategic element for the transformation of HPC into the high growth segment of technical computing and an important part of our smarter computing strategy.
Helene Armitage
General Manager of IBM Systems Software
Transaction Notes
- The acquisition of Platform Computing by IBM was announced on October 12, 2011; financial terms were not disclosed
- Resource-intensive applications have increasingly become “mission-critical” across a wide range of industry verticals including financial services and life sciences in additional to more traditional electronics design and research use cases – these enterprises have increasingly turned to clusters, grids and clouds built from commodity hardware for the associated compute- and data-intensive workloads
- The acquisition of Platform builds off an ongoing effort within IBM’s Systems & Technology Group (STG) to capitalize on these trends and focus on the mainstream commercial customers for whom compute- and data-intensive computing is a critical success factor
- Platform will bring to IBM the industry’s leading infrastructure products for HPC and technical computing applications, including more recent technology trends such as “big data” analytics (Map/Reduce, Hadoop); Platform also provides newer technology that will improve IBM’s cloud and dynamic data center product offerings
- The acquisition of Platform Computing was the culmination of a six-year relationship between Platform and Shea & Company; Shea & Company served as the company’s exclusive financial advisor on the transaction