Mergers & Acquisitions

Mergers & Acquisitions

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February 28, 2012

Worklight Acquisition Moves IBM into Mobile Software Development for Smartphones, Tablets



Mobile and cloud computing are not just trends that might happen someday – they’re a reality. Typical Web users rely on cloud services and mobile applications daily whether they know it or not. In the near future, we’ll probably see a stronger trend of corporate services and applications moving toward clouds.

IBM (News - Alert), the global enterprise with operations in 170 countries, is bringing that future closer with its recent acquisition of the Israeli-baesed company, Worklight. The company delivers mobile application management capabilities to clients across a wide range of industries including retail, financial services, technology, travel and hospitality and manufacturing. 

When it comes to application management, people increasingly use a constellation of devices, such as PCs, laptop computers, tablets, and smart mobile devices, are facing a persistent problem. They wonder how to keep their preferences, contact lists, calendars, user data and other related applications synchronized across all of the devices. According to Marie Wieck, general manager, IBM application and infrastructure middleware, “The acquisition of Worklight further enhances IBM’s broad mobile portfolio of software and services that deliver enterprise-grade mobility for clients — from IT systems all the way through to mobile devices. Now it will be easier than ever for our clients to offer secure and connected applications to their customers, business partners and employees.”

The Worklight platform is suitable for development of mobile applications for small businesses and larger enterprises. With the onset of the consumerization of IT and increased workforce mobility, the need for successful management of those systems is crucial for companies. Worklight’s technologies include Worklight Studio, an Eclipse-based IDE (integrated development environment) and Worklight Server, described on the company's website as a "secure and scalable gateway between applications, external services, and the enterprise backend infrastructure."

Worklight will become an important piece of IBM’s mobility strategy, helping clients dramatically reduce mobile application time to market, cost and complexity. In general, employees worldwide are excited about the potential of using their own mobile devices in the workplace. However, an increasing number of companies understand the need to manage and track the growing proliferation as well as having the capabilities to create custom applications. The availability of the Worklight platform through IBM will provide users and developers with one more resource for application development for iOS, Android (News - Alert), Blackberry and Windows mobile devices, without requiring code translation, proprietary interpreters or unpopular programming languages.




Edited by Carrie Schmelkin
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