IBM acquires content management company Trigo Technologies

IBM has agreed to acquire privately-held Trigo Technologies Inc., a provider of product information management middleware, IBM announced today. Financial details were not disclosed.

Trigo`s product information management middleware enables companies to integrate and centrally manage product information that is typically stored across an enterprise and a supply chain. Trigo`s middleware also links product-related information with terms of trade, such as pricing, and then synchronizes this information internally with existing enterprise systems and externally with business partners.

Trigo`s infrastructure allows product information to be deployed across a variety of customer, partner and employee systems, including web and commerce servers, printed documents, kiosks, point of sale systems, mobile devices, portals and industry-specific applications.

IBM says the acquisition of Trigo will further extend its portfolio of integration middleware as part of its WebSphere brand of products. "Trigo complements IBM`s middleware portfolio perfectly," said Steve Mills, IBM senior vice president and group executive, Software Group. "The benefit to our customers will be in our ability to deliver sophisticated, industry-specific middleware solutions that enable customers to introduce new products rapidly, improve their supply chain operations and customer service and enhance business performance."

Trigo has 150 employees and is headquartered in Brisbane, CA, with operations in Amsterdam and Bangalore, India.

IBM`s acquisition of Trigo follows by less than two months Global eXchange Services` acquisition of Haht Commerce, also a product information management system. "The IBM acquisition validates the market opportunity that we saw," says Robert Patrick, GXS chief marketing officer.

He adds that GXS` rationale for acquiring Haht was to help enterprises get their internal data in order so as to link to suppliers and other trading partners in collaborative relationships. Just since the Haht acquisiton, Patrick says, GXS has doubled the product management resources and tripled the product development resources available to Haht products.