A Look Back at 8 IBM Strategic Acquisitions in 2016

Big Blue expanded its analytics, disaster recovery and security capabilities in 2016 through a series of strategic acquisitions.

IBM first announced its intention to acquire the products and technology group from The Weather Company in October 2015 and the deal officially closed on Jan. 29, 2016. Among the products that IBM launched with The Weather Company assets in 2016 was a Cold and and Flu Tracker application in October 2016, that uses cognitive computing technology to provide data on localized cold and flu activity to consumers.

IBM acquired IRIS Analytics on Jan. 15, marking the first new acquisition of the year. IRIS Analytics provides real-time analytics to help combat payment fraud. IBM has since renamed the technology as IBM Counter Fraud Management for Safer Payments.

Barely a week after the acquisition of IRIS Analytics, IBM announced the acquisition of online streaming vendor Ustream on Jan. 21. Ustream joined the newly-formed IBM Cloud Video Services unit that combines assets from IBM’s Research and Development labs and strategic acquisitions.

IBM acquired Truven Health Analytics in a $2.6 billion deal announced on Feb.19. Truven Health Analytics is a provider of cloud-based healthcare data, analytics and insights.

Security has long been a core area of focus for IBM, which it bolstered with the Feb. 29 acquisition of Resilient Systems. Resilient System develops an incident response platform which was expanded on Dec. 15 with new ransomware capabilities.

On June 1, IBM announced that it was acquiring application discovery company EZSource. EZSource provides a visual dashboard that shows developers which applications have changed, to help expedite the process of modernizing applications, while exposing APIs and opening up development resources.

IBM announced on Sept. 29 that it was acquiring risk management and regulatory compliance consulting firm Promontory Financial Group. IBM is using Promontory’s expertise now to help train Watson to understand compliance and financial risk.

On Oct. 27, IBM announced its intent to acquire Sanovi Technologies, which provides disaster recovery services for hybrid cloud deployments. “As a cloud-native company, Sanovi will strengthen our resiliency portfolio to manage the broad range of applications, data, and IT systems of our clients balancing digital and hybrid cloud transformation with increased regulatory compliance,” Martin Jetter, senior vice president of Global Technology Services at IBM, said.