IBM Acquires CIMS Lab, Inc.

Software Helps Companies Track and Bill Software and Hardware Usage Across Virtualized Environments

ARMONK, NY - 25 Jan 2006: IBM today announced it has acquired CIMS Lab, Inc., a privately held software company based in Roseville, California. Financial details were not disclosed.

CIMS Lab is a leading provider of software that helps businesses track the usage of computing resources across virtualized technology environments -- such as servers, storage, email, networks, databases, applications and operating systems. The software gathers raw data about information technology (IT) resource usage and converts it into organized financial information that can help companies more easily understand how their technology resources are being consumed across a virtualized infrastructure consisting of many platforms and systems.

An accurate view of software and hardware usage helps organizations determine how computing virtualized resources are being used, what that usage costs, and how much departments should be charged. For example, a bank may have several different businesses -- commercial loans, mortgage branch, retail banking -- that share software applications and storage devices. CIMS Lab’s software provides information that helps the bank to determine how much usage should be billed back to each department, which helps to better allocate future IT spending.

Also, companies deploying a Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) can use CIMS Lab software to track and bill for IT usage as services travel across a vast and open IT infrastructure.

"Keeping tabs on IT costs is daunting for any organization facing a maze of platforms and systems that traditionally have been tracked separately and manually" said Al Zollar, general manager, IBM Tivoli software. "CIMS Lab software helps companies take control of their IT costs -- a key advantage of IT service management"

Rich Lechner, IBM’s vice president of Virtualization, said, "CIMS Lab is an important addition to IBM’s unparalleled virtualization portfolio of hardware, software and services. Customers are increasingly taking advantage of virtualization technologies to make it simpler and less expensive to optimize computing systems and lower the total cost of ownership across their entire IT infrastructure"

The acquisition of CIMS Lab complements IBM’s portfolio of management software for virtualized technology. Virtualization helps make it simpler and less expensive for companies to integrate and improve the performance of hardware, software, storage and networks in open and heterogeneous environments. It enables governments, banks, retailers and other organizations to view and manage their many virtual IT resources as one, and dynamically change and adjust them across their IT infrastructures accordingly.

According to a recent survey by IT market research firm IDC, spending on virtualization will grow to nearly $15 billion worldwide by 2009, with more than three-quarters of all companies with 500+ employees deploying virtual servers. The companies surveyed also expect that 45 percent of new servers purchased in 2007 will be virtualized.*

Resource accounting with CIMS Lab software extends IBM’s IT service management portfolio to financial management. With IT service management, companies can reduce technology complexity through automation and process integration and more easily comply with business policies and regulatory mandates.

CIMS Lab has more than 170 customers worldwide in industries such as financial services, government, healthcare and manufacturing.

With this announcement, IBM is planning to:

* Integrate CIMS Lab’s operations within IBM’s Tivoli division led by general manager Al Zollar.
* Incorporate CIMS Lab technology into IBM’s software, hardware and services. IBM plans to ship CIMS Lab with IBM Director, complementing the virtualization capabilities of xSeries eServers and pSeries eServers; IBM also plans to integrate CIMS software with IBM Tivoli software products as part of an accounting and chargeback offering.
* Sell CIMS Lab software products through IBM’s worldwide sales channels and IBM Business Partners.
* Build upon the companies’ existing business relationships and joint customers worldwide.

About IBM
IBM is the world’s largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. Drawing on resources from across IBM and key IBM Business Partners, IBM offers a wide range of services, solutions and technologies that enable customers, large and small, to take full advantage of the new era of on demand business. For more information about IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com. IBM and Tivoli are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Other company, product or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. *Source: IDC: "Server Virtualization 2005: Understanding the Adoption of Virtualized Server Resources" October 2005

About CIMS Lab
CIMS Lab, based in Roseville, Calif., is a leading provider of Resource Accounting, Chargeback, and Capacity Planning software products and is an integral part of today’s corporate financial and reporting systems. The CIMS suite of software is used by more than 170 organizations around the world. CIMS Lab has been an IBM Business Partner since 2003.

Contact Information

Laurie Friedman

IBM Media Relations

IBM

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